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5 May 2017

What Determines Teens’ Fruit, Vegetable, and Water Intake?

Keywords: fruit, health, teens, tweens, vegetables, ERC, Western Europe, food, food intake, peers, survey,

Many teens do not eat enough fruit and vegetables and also do not meet the prescribed daily water intake. To improve teens’ diet, it is important to know what actually determines their fruit, vegetables and water intake. A study in Health Psychology shows that teens’ actual intake is determined by whether they are intrinsically motivated (really want and like to eat fruit and vegetables and drink water). Teens also drink more water when they think that their parents often drink water.

Take aways

  • Teens eat more fruit and vegetables and drink more water when they really want and like it.
  • They also drink more water when they see their parents drink water often.
  • For health campaign developers focusing on promoting fruit, vegetable, and water intake, it is worth looking at ways to improve teens’ intrinsic motivation and the intake of parents.

 

Study information

  • Who?

    953 participants (mean age: 11, age range: 8-14, 54% female)

  • Where?

    The Netherlands

  • How?

    This study was part of the MyMovez project, which was funded by the European Research Council.

    The researchers used data from the MyMovez project, which investigated the impact of the social environment on teens’ consumption behavior and physical activity. All participants carried a MyMovez Wearable Lab (a smartphone with a research application and an activity tracker) with them for five days. On the smartphone, participants filled out questions about how much they liked eating fruit and vegetables and drinking water, their intentions to eat more fruit and vegetables and drink more water in the near future, whether they believed they could eat more fruit and vegetables and drink more water, and their actual fruit, vegetable, and water intake. The teens also indicated whether they thought their friends ate fruit and vegetables and drink water often, whether they had the feeling that their friends expected them to eat more fruit and vegetables and drink more water, and if they were intrinsically motivated to eat and drink healthy.

Facts and findings

  • Teens intended to eat more fruit and vegetables and drink more water when they:
    • believed it was easy for them to eat and drink healthy;
    • thought that their friends expected them to eat more fruit and vegetables and drink more water.
  • However, these intentions did not determine their actual intake.
  • The teens actually ate more fruit and vegetables and drank more water when they were intrinsically motivated to do so.
  • Teens also actually drank more water when they thought their parents drink water often.