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StudentKost: a cross-sectional study assessing college students’ diets: reason for concern?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 September 2020

Erlend L. Valen*
Affiliation:
Department of Nutrition and Public Health, Faculty of Health and Sport Sciences, University of Agder, PO Box 422, 4604Kristiansand, Norway
Dagrun Engeset
Affiliation:
Department of Nutrition and Public Health, Faculty of Health and Sport Sciences, University of Agder, PO Box 422, 4604Kristiansand, Norway
Nina C. Øverby
Affiliation:
Department of Nutrition and Public Health, Faculty of Health and Sport Sciences, University of Agder, PO Box 422, 4604Kristiansand, Norway
Elisabet R. Hillesund
Affiliation:
Department of Nutrition and Public Health, Faculty of Health and Sport Sciences, University of Agder, PO Box 422, 4604Kristiansand, Norway
*
*Corresponding author: Erlend L. Valen, email erlend.l.valen@uia.no

Abstract

College students constitute a significant proportion of the young adult population in Norway. They are in their reproductive years, which is of interest regarding diet and preconception health. Our objective was to assess young college students’ diet and nutrient intake in relation to national dietary recommendations and assess the probability of inadequate micronutrient intake for both genders using the Nordic Nutrition Recommendations, and also to evaluate its consequences on preconception health and create a groundwork for future interventions on this group. At the University of Agder (UiA), we enrolled 622 students aged 18–40 years for a cross-sectional study of student's diet, StudentKost. The students completed a food frequency questionnaire, including questions of supplement use, over the past 4 weeks. Intake of fruits, vegetables, oily fish, and whole grain was lower than recommended, as were mean intake of folate, iron, and iodine. Our main findings are that students have a somewhat suboptimal diet compared to the Norwegian dietary guidelines. Male students had generally lower diet quality than females. Compared to the Nordic Nutrition Recommendations (NNR), we also saw a relatively high probability of inadequate intake of several micronutrients and a very high probability for some micronutrients in a significant portion of the sample. Public health effort should be directed towards improving students and young adults’ diet in general, and interventions towards improving preconception health should be explored. The low participation rate limits the generalizability of our findings. Our findings encourage further investigation into young adults’ diet.

Information

Type
Research Article
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Nutrition Society
Figure 0

Table 1. Age, height, weight, BMI and educational attainment among participating women and men in the StudentKost study

Figure 1

Table 2. Intake of different foods and their respective recommendations, in median g/d, if not otherwise stated

Figure 2

Table 3. Energy intake and macronutrient contribution to energy intake compared to the Nordic Nutrition Recommendations by gender, presented as E% if not otherwise stated.

Figure 3

Table 4. Micronutrient intake per day compared to NNR and related to recommendations in percentage.

Figure 4

Table 5. Micronutrient intake per day compared to NNR and related to recommendations in percentage