Environmental and personal correlates of fruit and vegetable consumption in low income, urban Mexican children

Abstract

Correlates of fruit and vegetable consumption in children from Mexico City's State Schools were being female and accessibility to fruits and vegetables. Home and school environments are decisive for the children to increase FV consumption. Creative ways to encourage FV consumption in boys should be explored. These factors should be considered when designing programmes aimed at increasing consumption of fruits and vegetables in children.

Social, attitudinal and behavioural correlates of fruit and vegetable consumption among Cypriot adolescents

“…The percentage that reported consuming at least one portion of fruit or vegetables daily ranged from 91?5 % to 98?0 %. These levels are higher than those reported in nine European countries (8) and in Mexico (9) . Discrepancies between the countries may be because of the different measures used to assess FV consumption.…”

“…The lack of gender differences in FV consumption may be partly explained by the fact that a wider age range of children participated in the present study (mean age ranged from 11?8 to 16?9 years), whereas previous studies were mainly conducted among elementary school students (7,9,10) . Whereas almost all adolescents in our sample consumed at least one portion of fruit or vegetables daily, only approximately one-fifth met the recommendation of consuming five or more portions daily.…”

“…Data from nine European countries indicate that 43?2 % of children consume fruit and 46?1 % consume vegetables every day (8) , whereas data from Mexico suggest that 61?0 % of children consume FV at least once daily (9) . Studies also indicate that girls are more likely to meet the recommendation of five or more portions of FV daily compared with boys (7,9,10) .Recently, social-ecological models have been proposed for the better understanding of factors that influence nutritional behaviour, as they focus not only on individual factors but also on social and physical environmental factors (11)(12)(13) . These multilevel models acknowledge the influence of multiple factors on nutritional behaviour; however, they refer to domains of influence rather than to specific variables (13,14) .…”

The effects of a school-based intervention programme on dietary intakes and physical activity among primary-school children in Trinidad and Tobago

“…These findings suggest that the mechanisms influencing changes in the consumption of these foods might be different (24)(25)(26) . They might also suggest the need to take into consideration the environmental context in which food consumption occurs in designing effective interventions (27)(28)(29) . Most of the participants in the current study were enrolled in the National School-feeding Programme.…”

Development and test–retest reliability of a nutrition knowledge questionnaire for primary-school children

“…Moreover studies examining the effects of programmes designed to increase nutrition knowledge have found positive results (11,12) . However, other studies found no significant relationship (13,14) . Explanations for the inconsistent results are poor measurement of knowledge (lack of relevance, poor conceptualization, different levels of specificity of knowledge and dietary habits), different measurements of knowledge, poor measurement of dietary intake, lack of statistical power and the many factors that influence dietary behaviours of which nutritional knowledge is just one (15) .…”