A Pilot Study on Dietary Choices at Universities: Vending Machines, Canteens, and Lunch from Home

Leandro Oliveira, Mona N. BinMowyna, Ibrahim Alasqah, Renata Puppin Zandonadi, Edite Teixeira-Lemos, Cláudia Chaves, Hmidan A. Alturki, Najla A. Albaridi, Fatmah Fahad Alribdi, António Raposo

Resultado de pesquisarevisão de pares

3 Citações (Scopus)

Resumo

Commercial environments and food acquisition methods significantly shape dietary practices and impact health. This study assesses dietary choices among Portuguese university students regarding vending machines, canteens, and lunches from home. It also evaluates their use of the university canteen and their tendency to bring lunch from home. This pilot cross-sectional study used a self-administered electronic questionnaire, made available in early 2023. Participants were recruited through snowball sampling. The study included 137 students from Portuguese higher education institutions, mainly women (74.5%), pursuing degrees or integrated Master’s degrees (83.2%), primarily in health-related fields (55.5%). The median age was 21 years (20 to 23.5 years). About 70.0% regularly consumed food from vending machines, while approximately 60.0% brought lunch from home, avoiding the canteen. Factors such as convenience (48.5%), price (47.5%), product availability (40.6%), and taste (39.6%) mainly influenced vending machine choices. Monthly, chocolates, water, coffee, cookies, treats, and soft drinks were the most commonly acquired items, with coffee being the most frequent daily purchase. These findings provide insights for creating policies and initiatives to promote healthier and more accessible food options for students and strategies to encourage positive eating behaviors.

Idioma originalInglês
Número do artigo1722
RevistaNutrients
Volume16
Número de emissão11
DOIs
Estado da publicaçãoPublicadas - 31 mai. 2024

Nota bibliográfica

Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 by the authors.

Financiamento

Financiadoras/-esNúmero do financiador
Fundação para a Ciência e TecnologiaRef. UIDB/05507/2020
Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia

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