Abstract
In the aftermath of nutrition transition and ever-increasing sedentarism, adolescents globally are exposed to negative health consequences. Diverse sociocultural influences play a critical role in their adoption of unhealthy dietary practices and suboptimal physical activity behaviors. Context-specific understandings of how these sociocultural influences shape adolescents’ dietary and physical activity patterns in a rural, resource-limited setting remained elusive. Aiming to address the gap, this qualitative study explored adolescents’ and mothers’ perception of broader sociocultural aspects that sculpt the food choices, eating habits and physical activity behaviors of adolescents in Matlab, Bangladesh. Six digitally-recorded focus group discussions were transcribed verbatim, translated into English and analyzed thematically. Marked taste-driven dietary preference of adolescents and its prioritization within family by the mothers, popularity of street foods, better understanding of the importance of food hygiene and safety contrasting with narrow perception of balance and diversity in diet, peer influence along with deficient school and community food environment, internalization and rigidity of gender norms were found to be exerting major influence. The findings highlighted key targets for community-based nutrition interventions and endorsed thorough consideration of socio-cultural factors in formulating strategies to promote healthful eating and physical activity behaviors among the adolescents.
Highlights
Adolescence is a transitional life phase characterized by marked biopsychosocial changes potentially capable of determining the future health status in adulthood
While the majority of qualitative studies on adolescents’ diet and physical activity have been conducted in urban settings with higher standards of living, this study aimed to explore adolescents’
The horizontal axis on the top of the figure focuses on adolescence within the broader life course and conceptually localizes our findings at the interface between adolescents’ dietary and physical activity behaviors, and socio-cultural influences shaping that
Summary
Adolescence is a transitional life phase characterized by marked biopsychosocial changes potentially capable of determining the future health status in adulthood. The outcomes of demographic and nutritional transitions in the preceding decades with simultaneous socioeconomic changes have put adolescents at the core of many burning global and public health challenges [2]. Unhealthy dietary practices and eating habits among adolescents involving less consumption of fruits and vegetables [5,6,7], snacking [8], frequent consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB) [5,9] and tendency to skip breakfast [6,7,10,11,12] combined with an increase in screen-based recreational behaviors like watching television, playing games and using social media [5] have exposed adolescents globally to a higher likelihood of adverse health outcomes in their ensuing adulthood. Exploration of dietary and physical activity behaviors in this population is, of notable public health interest
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