TY - JOUR
T1 - A Pilot Study on Dietary Choices at Universities
T2 - Vending Machines, Canteens, and Lunch from Home
AU - Oliveira, Leandro
AU - BinMowyna, Mona N.
AU - Alasqah, Ibrahim
AU - Zandonadi, Renata Puppin
AU - Teixeira-Lemos, Edite
AU - Chaves, Cláudia
AU - Alturki, Hmidan A.
AU - Albaridi, Najla A.
AU - Alribdi, Fatmah Fahad
AU - Raposo, António
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 by the authors.
PY - 2024/5/31
Y1 - 2024/5/31
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
KW - Adult
KW - Choice Behavior
KW - Cross-Sectional Studies
KW - Diet/statistics & numerical data
KW - Feeding Behavior
KW - Female
KW - Food Dispensers, Automatic/statistics & numerical data
KW - Food Preferences
KW - Food Services/statistics & numerical data
KW - Humans
KW - Lunch
KW - Male
KW - Pilot Projects
KW - Portugal
KW - Students/statistics & numerical data
KW - Surveys and Questionnaires
KW - Universities
KW - Young Adult
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85196600979&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3390/nu16111722
DO - 10.3390/nu16111722
M3 - Article
C2 - 38892655
AN - SCOPUS:85196600979
SN - 2072-6643
VL - 16
JO - Nutrients
JF - Nutrients
IS - 11
M1 - 1722
ER -