Factors influencing healthy food choices of university students

• Autor(a) principal: Sousa, Bruno
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Outros Autores: Alves Pacheco, Catarina, Pereira, Carolina, Batalha, Mariana, Santos, Tânia, Vitorino de Carvalho, Rita
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.26/34873
• topic: food choice; consumption trends; healthy food; behaviors; university students; Madeira Island; Região Autónoma da Madeira; Portugal; escolha alimentar; tendências de consumo; comida saudável; comportamentos; estudantes universitários

Introduction : Healthy foods, like fruits, vegetables, legumes, and nuts, among others, should be available to anyone, especially young people, for example at the school level (1).In the National Program for the Promotion of Healthy Eating, one of the action plans for 2018-2019 was the “Modification of food supply in certain public spaces (including higher education institutions)” and for 2019- 2020: “Contribute technically to the implementation of a simplifying nutrition labeling system”(4). Thus, schools and universities should be able to encourage young people to choose higher quality food products by promoting certain menu changes (2).Today it is known that young consumers are well informed about the products they eat (3) and also have become more aware of the foods they chose both at home and away from home (4). Increasingly interested in adhering to a healthy diet, young people are progressively opting for more complete food products, both in terms of their nutritional value, as well as their origin, the form of production, including locally grown and organically grown produce, the composition, and the healthiness of the food product (5,6). Conscientious consumers value personal health and are sensitive to the effects of food products (5). Young people also place progressively greater attention on the quality of a product. In addition to the quality parameter of a food product, other factors influence young people's choices, namely economic (7), social, and personal taste (3) factors. However, due to the adaptation of a new environment,study stress, lack of proper time management and busy class schedules, these university students can suffer a lack of concern about their own health and consequently also present unhealthy food choices (8,9). The presence of healthy restaurants in the university campus could be a possible way to prevent these unhealthy patterns. Taking this into consideration, the main aim of the presente study was to describe the factors that may influence the choice for a healthy restaurant in the university campus, as well as the trends in healthy food consumption among university students from the Universidade Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias (ULHT) in Lisbon, Portugal.