Are University Students in Singapore Meeting the International and National Recommended Daily Servings of Fruits and Vegetables?

Abstract

Data are lacking on fruit and vegetable (FV) consumption among young adults in the Asia-Pacific region. The aim of this study is to assess the prevalence of students who met the international and national recommendation of daily consumption of 5 and 4 FV servings, respectively, in a university in Singapore and the factors associated with meeting the national recommendation. A cross-sectional survey using proportional stratified random sampling was conducted on 884 undergraduates in 2013. The prevalence of meeting the international and national recommendation was 13.6% and 27.1%, respectively. The significant factors of meeting national recommendation were those from higher socioeconomic status, those making conscious effort to eat food high in fiber, those not skipping breakfast, those having a lower frequency of deep fried food consumption and those with higher meal frequency. Behavioral and structural interventions to educate, motivate and nudge university students to promote FV consumption are required in Singapore.

Vegetable Consumption and Factors Associated with Increased Intake among College Students: A Scoping Review of the Last 10 Years

“…The majority (70.4%) of the studies focused on evaluating elements of the whole diet of participants. Thirteen studies were specific regarding the consumption of fruits and vegetables [20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32], while only three studies were exclusively focused on vegetables [33,34,35]. Five studies investigated adherence to the Mediterranean diet and its relation with the consumption of specific food categories, such as vegetables [36,37,38,39,40].…”

“…Another study also chose 24-h recalls [61] for assessing food consumption, while three studies used diet story questionnaires [35,62,63]. Thirty-one studies declared having used questionnaires, adapted or designed specifically for the study purposes [20,24,25,26,28,29,30,31,33,36,38,64,65,66,67,68,69,70,71,72,73,74,75,76,77,78,79,80,81,82,83]. Seven studies used prospective methods for evaluating food consumption [17,18,19,22,39,84,85].…”

Correlates, Facilitators and Barriers of Healthy Eating Among Primary Care Patients with Prediabetes in Singapore—A Mixed Methods Approach

“…The questions were taken from the National Nutrition Survey (NNS) in Singapore [30]. The questionnaire used in the NNS has been administered to the Singapore population since 1993 with several published studies [31,32,33], and hence was familiar to our study population. To minimise social desirability biases, we (i) assured participants that their responses were anonymous, (ii) stressed the importance of responding honestly because their responses would be used for programme improvement, and (iii) ensured that the questionnaire was worded in a non-judgemental manner.…”

Dietary Patterns of Breakfast Consumption Among Chilean University Students

“…To be considered good quality, breakfast should contain at least three of the main food groups: dairy, cereals, and fruits [22]. Despite the importance of breakfast, skipping breakfast or consuming a low-quality breakfast is a common practice among students [5,23,24]. Data from Chile shows that among young (19-29 years) Chileans, breakfast consists mainly of fruits (54.4%) and cereals (40.0%), with low consumption of dairy products (23.0%) [25].…”