engleski

Awareness of dietary recommendations among adolescents

INTRODUCTION During adolescence, young people take responsibility for their own eating habits, health attitudes and behaviours and create lifelong lasting habits so it is essential that they adopt healthy habits according to dietary recommendations. Knowledge is one of the factors necessary for changing dietary habits, and with insight in knowledge is possible to get clear picture about areas upon which we must act. OBJECTIVES The aim of this work was to question dietary recommendation awareness and dietary habits in adolescents. METHOD Modified General Nutrition Knowledge Questionnaire was self- administered during school time. Sample included high school students, mean age 17.9 years. RESULTS 77.3% of participants were familiar with general dietary recommendations. Still, with the recommendations regarding consumption of more fibres and less meat and meat product 68.4% and 25.6% of adolescents were familiar. The specific recommendations, such as consumption of five servings of fruits and vegetable knew only 8.5% adolescents. Frequency of fruits consumption was very low ; 13.9% of boys and 19.5% of girls consumed fruits three or more times per day. 28.2% of boys and 47.8% of girls consumed vegetables two or more times per day. Main source of information about food and nutrition were television (75.2%) and Internet (50.0%). Although half of the participating adolescents claimed to read the declaration, it serves as a source of information for 22.2% of them. CONCLUSION Although general recommendations regarding increase or decrease of certain food groups were familiar to majority of the participating adolescents, specific recommendations were not known. Television and Internet as major and very influential sources of information should be intensified by competent experts to influence nutrition knowledge and decrease of non-communicable diseases.

dietary knowledge ; eating habits ; adolescents

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