Assessment of selected nutritional behaviours among college adolescents from Pomerania Province

Background: Adequate nutrition is one of the most important environmental factor that determines the development of children and adolescents. Childhood, as well as puberty significantly take part in forming proper nutritional attitudes and behaviours

Objectives: Assessment of selected nutritional behaviors among college adolescents from Pomerania Province. Subjects were students of high schools, trade schools and technical institutes.

Material and methods: In the study 198 students participated – 121 girls and 77 boys. A study was conducted during school year 2012/2013. Nutritional behavior was assessed due to an anonymous questionnaire that concerned nutritional self-assessment of adolescents, their interests in healthy dietary patterns, amount and type of daily consumed foods, time of consumption of last meal of the day, snacking between main meals; frequency together with a quality of the snacks, and sources of dietary knowledge acquisition.

Results: Data analysis showed that boys ate dinner and supper statistically significantly more frequently than girls. Gender also defined consumption of products from different food groups. Boys statistically significantly more often were choosing white bread, dumplings, pasta, milk, red meat, poultry and eggs. The amount of underweight girls was three times higher than underweight boys. Snacking was observed in 99.0% of the study group. Diet regimens were conducted statistically more often by girls (37.5%) than boys (6.3%).

Conclusions: It has been shown that there are a number of abnormal nutritional behaviors in the study group. This indicates the need for their correction through the education of both young people, but also parents and legal guardians. It is recommended that workshops, youth training by nutritionists in the field of proper nutrition and eating behavior.