Theoretically Driven Intervention for Reducing Fast Food Consumption among Students: A Case of Theory of Planned Behavior

ABSTRACT

Background

The dramatic increase in fast food consumption among students, particularly adolescents and children, over the past two decades reflects a significant shift in lifestyle, with nearly one-third of these young individuals consuming ready-made foods on a daily basis.

Purpose

This study aims to evaluate the effect of an intervention based on the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) in reducing fast food consumption among high-school students.

Methods

One hundred and sixty Iranian high-school students were randomly assigned to an intervention or control group in a pretest-posttest-follow-up field trial. The intervention comprised four, 45-min teaching sessions over 3 weeks. Fast food consumption beliefs and self-report practices were assessed at pretest, posttest, and follow-up using a validated scale. Data analysis included descriptive statistics analyses-tests and ANOVA tests.

Results

Findings revealed a statistically significant difference in the posttest between experiment and control groups in the major components of fast food consumption including behavioral beliefs (t = 5.1, p < 0001), evaluation of behavioral outcomes (t = 5.3, p < 0001), normative beliefs (t = 2.3, p < 05), motivation to comply (t = 5.5, p < 0001), control beliefs (t = 4.4, p < 0001), perceived power (t = 3.3, p < 0001), and behavioral intention (t = .68, p < 0001). Similar results were obtained in the follow-up stage.

Discussion

Results suggest a parent-teacher participation intervention effectively reduced fast food consumption among high-school students, impacting both cognitive and behavioral factors. This model offers potential for customization to promote healthy food intake in wider student populations and beyond the school setting.

Translation to Health Education Practice

According to our findings, several suggestions can be addressed. First, considering the crucial role of parents and teachers in shaping healthy food habits, future studies should always consider them as a key component of the training intervention. Second, parents and teachers should be trained on how to best transfer and express their knowledge to children and adolescents with regard to their disapproval of fast food consumption. As our findings show, students can perceive this disapproval and change their own attitudes accordingly. Third, future studies are recommended to use multilevel interventions to prevent students from consuming fast food. For both students and parents, we suggest adding more professionally designed visual and graphical messages (e.g. Infographics) or short video clips into interventions that could effectively demonstrate the differences between beliefs related to the consumption of fast food and healthy foods.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank all the students, their teachers and parents twhoagreed to participate in this study.

Authors’ contributions

SR and MG designed the study and applied for ethics approval. YS and PH collected data and entered data into the statistical programs. MC analyzed data and drew tables and figures. SR and YS wrote the first draft. LS and FD structured the manuscript, improved the English text and removed typos. MC, PH and MG revised the first draft. LS and FD improved the second version. MC, PH, and SR revised the second and third versions. All authors checked and confirmed the final version.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/19325037.2024.2338564

Data availability statement

The data of this study will be available upon request.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

This study received an ethics approval from the ethics board of Shahid Beheshti Unersity of Medical Sciences located in Tehran, Iran (Ethic Code: 6727). Moreover, a written informed consent was obtained from the parents of each participant before the participant could take part in this study. All methods were carried out in accordance with Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences (SBMU) guidelines and regulations.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.