Abstract
There is limited evidence in Japan regarding the psychosocial determinants of fruit/vegetable intake. We performed a cross-sectional study of people aged 18 years or older in four regions of Japan; 2308 (men: 1012, women: 1296) individuals who completed the questionnaires were included. We found that 24.8% of people were aware of the current recommendations for vegetables and 13.2% for fruit and that “ability to design meals” and “availability when eating outside of the home” were the most important factors related to self-efficacy and barriers to fruit and vegetable intake, respectively. People with high self-efficacy (OR: 3.16; 95% CI: 2.17, 4.60 for fruit; OR: 4.52; 95% CI: 3.08, 6.64 for vegetables) were more likely to consume more fruit and vegetables. People with high scores on attitude (OR: 1.54; 95% CI: 1.06, 2.24) and social support (OR: 1.59; 95% CI: 1.11, 2.27) were more likely to consume more fruit. People with high perceived barriers (OR: 0.69; 95% CI: 0.48, 0.98) were less likely to consume fruit. This study suggests a need to increase the general population’s awareness of the fruit and vegetable intake recommendations; facilitating positive attitudes, self-efficacy, and social support for individuals and strengthening the ability of individuals to design meals with more vegetables and fruit might be useful intervention programs.
Highlights
The health benefits of fruit/vegetable consumption are widely accepted, especially in the prevention of cancer, stroke, cardiovascular disease, and hypertension [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10] through potential mechanisms such as antioxidant activity, modulation of detoxification enzymes, stimulation of the immune system, decrease in platelet aggregation, and alterations in the cholesterol metabolism [11].Int
A self-administered questionnaire survey gathered data on demographic characteristics, self-reported daily fruit/vegetable intake, and psychosocial parameters related to fruit and vegetable intake
The results indicated that women had relatively high scores of nutritional knowledge (r = ́0.163, p < 0.01), attitude (r = ́0.145, p < 0.01), self-efficacy (r = ́0.180, p < 0.01), and responsibility of food purchasing and preparing/meal planning (r = ́0.395, p < 0.01) in comparison with men (Table 3); men had relatively high scores of perceived barriers (r = ́0.075, p < 0.01) to fruit/vegetable intake than women (Table 3)
Summary
The health benefits of fruit/vegetable consumption are widely accepted, especially in the prevention of cancer, stroke, cardiovascular disease, and hypertension [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10] through potential mechanisms such as antioxidant activity, modulation of detoxification enzymes, stimulation of the immune system, decrease in platelet aggregation, and alterations in the cholesterol metabolism [11]. Res. Public Health 2016, 13, 786; doi:10.3390/ijerph13080786 www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph
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