Navigation
Eating behaviour of university students in Germany: dietary intake, barriers to healthy eating and changes in eating behaviour since the time of matriculation
According to Hilger et. al (2017), young adults have been neglected in health promotion strategies which is why this study aimed to investigate a total of 689 university students from all over Germany on their baseline dietary intake, common barriers to healthy eating, and changes in eating behavior since their first day in university. The data was taken from the cross-sectional online survey in the Nutrition and Physical Activity Study (NuPhA), which recruited students from more than 40 universities. Hilger, Loerbroks and Diehl (2017) found that there was room for improvement in terms of consumption of certain food groups such as fruits and vegetables. Also identified were the main barriers to healthy eating for the academics: lack of time due to studies; lack of healthy meals at the university canteen; and the high prices of healthy food. Cluster analysis indicated the possibility that these barriers to consuming healthy foods in university may only affect specific subgroups such as first-year students. Since matriculation, changes in dietary behavior included the consumption of meat, fish and regular meals but this suggests future qualitative studies are warranted to explore the reason for these changes in behavior, hopefully producing useful information for health promotion strategies in the university setting. [NPID: behavior, public health, health promotion strategies, university students, fruit, vegetables]
Year: 2017
