P147 - #Healthy vs. #Unhealthy: Perceptions of Today's College Students

Abstract

Background (Background, Rationale, Prior Research, and/or Theory): Today's youth have grown up in a world that has always included social media. The use of Instagram, Snap Chat, and other related apps to characterize one's life often seems as important as in-person interactions. Objective: To evaluate students' perspectives of what they consider healthy and unhealthy foods through their Instagram posts. Study Design, Setting, Participants, Intervention: Forty students in a university course completed an assignment in which they were asked to post five “healthy” and five “unhealthy” food images. Each photograph was to include a set of specific tags (i.e. #healthy; #lunch; #10am). Additional tags could be included at the students' discretion. Outcome Measures and Analysis: Photographs were categorized (healthy/unhealthy). Analysis included the food group/type, time of day, meal, and preparation method. Results: Twenty-two students consented to include their Instagram photos as part of the research project. One student deleted her photographs from her account and was unable to retrieve them prior to analysis. Therefore, photographs from 21 (16 female; 5 male) students were considered for this analysis. The food groups most represented in healthy photographs included: meat/alternatives, grains, and soup. Among the unhealthy images, grains, sweets, meat/alternatives and sandwiches were most prominent. Dinner included the greatest number of posts overall (43.7% and 31.1%, healthy and unhealthy, respectively). Healthy food photos were more likely than unhealthy food photos to be posted at meals (85.4% vs. 64.1%). Snacking always was more likely to show unhealthy images, especially at afternoon snack (12.6% vs. 4.9%, unhealthy vs. healthy, respectively). Conclusions and Implications: Evaluating Instagram posts is an interesting method to gauge college students' definition of healthy and unhealthy food. Students appear to post more “healthy” images at meal times while snack posts tend to show unhealthier items more frequently. Whether this corresponds to actual intake habits is unclear from this assessment. Funding: None.