Don't know, don't care or confused: what do Australian adolescents know about Australian Dietary Guidelines?

ABSTRACT

Western Australian adolescents are not adhering to the Australian Dietary Guidelines yet little research has considered what adolescents know about the Healthy Living Pyramid (HLP), the recommended daily serves. Four studies assessed nutrition-related knowledge or influences on food preference. Studies one and two investigated adolescent's perceptions of healthy and unhealthy food and what influences their food choice by conducting 24 gender-specific focus groups (n = 150, 12–16 years). Study three (n = 28, 13–14 year) assessed the test–retest reliability of a nutrition questionnaire that measured knowledge of the HLP and the recommended daily serves. Study four (n = 38, 12–16 years) measured changes in HLP knowledge after a six session community-based cooking and food-literacy program. Participant's knowledge about discretionary foods and vegetables was high, however, knowledge about intake of the other food groups especially grains was poor. Body image emerged as the strongest influence over food preference with media reinforcing girl's desire to be thin and boy's desire to be muscular.

KEYWORDS:

• Adolescents
• nutrition knowledge
• Healthy Living Pyramid
• recommended daily serves
• mixed methods

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Fiona Farringdon, Associate Dean Teaching and Learning School of Health Sciences. Fiona has been involved in health education and health promotion for over 30 years at the practitioner and academic levels. Her research interests include the efficacy of school-based health education programs; reducing alcohol and other drug-related harm for individuals and communities, eating patterns and nutrition knowledge of adolescents and mental health in adolescents. She is committed to translating research evidence into effective practice. Fiona has authored and co-authored 25 peer-reviewed journal article, 16 technical reports and presented at over 22 conferences (state, national and international). She has been a member of research teams that have been awarded over $800,000 in funding for various research projects. Fiona is currently supervising four PhD students

Beth Hands, Senior Research Scholar, Institute of Health Research. Beth has undertaken research involving children and adolescents for over two decades. Beth's research output includes numerous books or book chapters, over 70 refereed journal articles, 2 book reviews, 12 research reports, 5 professional publications, 4 audio-visual publications and 1 CD-ROM. In addition, she has presented papers at 67 international conferences, 62 national or state conferences, given 6keynote addresses and been an invited speaker on 32 occasions. Professor Hands has been on 20 grants totalling over $5 million, including 3 NHMRC grants.

Dr Paola Chivers, Senior Lecturer, Research & Biostatistics Support Officer, Institute of Health Research. Dr Chivers’ research interests are in the area of child and adolescent health with a particular emphasis on motor control, disability, education and obesity. Paola now provides research and biostatistics training and advice to HDR students and staff in one-to-one sessions and numerous workshops across the country. Paola is an Early Career Researcher with over a dozen publications and co-supervising a number of Masters and PhD students.

ORCID

Fiona Farringdon http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3557-594X