Nutrition knowledge in adolescents: perception of parents and peers behavior an...

• Author(s): Ferro-Lebres, Vera ; Ribeiro, José Carlos ; Moreira, Pedro ; Silva, Gustavo Gonçalves da ; Aires, Luísa
• Date: 2010
• Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10198/5257
• Origin: Biblioteca Digital do IPB
• Subject(s): Nutrition knowledge; Adolescents
• Document Type: Conference Object
• Language: English

Description

It is well known the influence that parents and peers have in children and adolescent choices and behaviors, including eating habits and physical activity practice. No work has been done yet about parents and peers influence in nutrition knowledge. This work aims to study the relation between adolescents’ perception of parents and peers food habits, physical activity practice, stimulus to the adolescent to follow a healthy diet and be physically active and adolescents Nutritional Knowledge. Methods: A translated and validated version of the Nutritional Knowledge Questionnaire (Parmenter and Wardle, 1999) was used with another questionnaire about adolescents’ perception of parents and peers behavior and stimulus. Results: Data from a 653 male and female sample, mean age 15.9 years (SD = 2.10) show that Nutrition Knowledge is related to the perception adolescents have of their fathers’ physical activity level (P < 0.05), and of their mothers (P < 0.05) and peers (P < 0.01) healthy eating habits. No statistical significance was found to the relation between nutrition knowledge and all other adolescent perceptions. Conclusions: These results suggest that beside there is a relation of Nutrition Knowledge and parents and peers perceived habits, the major role must be in schools. Showing that school based and adolescent focused interventions must be planned to improve nutrition knowledge.