Adolescent Dietary Behaviors and Health Influences

Adolescence represents a critical juncture for establishing dietary patterns with long-term health consequences. Nutritional choices during this period are shaped by an interplay of individual motivations, family environments, peer dynamics, school settings and broader socioeconomic and cultural contexts. Throughout adolescence, shifting autonomy fosters increased self-regulation, with teenagers gradually assuming responsibility for food selection and meal preparation as they negotiate taste preferences, body-image concerns and social norms. Concurrently, parental modelling and home food availability remain strong determinants of healthy or unhealthy eating trajectories. Barriers such as limited cooking skills, cost constraints and time pressures often compound the challenges of maintaining a balanced diet, while facilitators include supportive parenting practices, accessible nutrition education and enabling school-based food policies. Recent work has emphasised gender differences in intrinsic and extrinsic motivations for food choice, cultural specificities in family facilitation of healthy eating, and the design of robust assessment tools for adolescent dietary research. Insights into the psychosocial determinants of eating behaviour and the evaluation of intervention strategies underscore the global significance of aligning policy, education and environment to promote lifelong healthy habits and to mitigate rising rates of obesity and related non-communicable diseases.

Research from Nature Portfolio

A newly validated adolescent food-preferences questionnaire adapted for Persian speakers has demonstrated strong internal consistency and test–retest reliability, with exploratory factor analysis revealing distinct domains such as fruits, dairy and snacks. Known-group comparisons by sex and body mass index confirmed its sensitivity to expected behavioural differences, while negative correlations with psychological distress highlight links between eating preferences and mental well-being. This tool offers a culturally sensitive, psychometrically robust instrument for large-scale monitoring of dietary patterns in diverse adolescent populations.

Adolescent Dietary Behaviors and Health Influences publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in adolescent dietary behaviors and health influences across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Exploratory factor analysis: A statistical method for identifying underlying relationships among measured variables to group them into latent constructs.

Internal consistency: A measure of reliability that assesses the degree to which items within a scale are interrelated.

Test–retest reliability: An assessment of the stability of a measure over time by administering it to the same subjects on two occasions.

Known-group validity: A form of construct validity established when an instrument can distinguish between groups known to differ on the variable of interest.

Psychosocial determinants: Interrelated psychological and social factors that influence behaviour and decision-making.

References

1. Boys and girls differ in their rationale behind eating: a systematic review of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations in dietary habits across countries. Frontiers in Nutrition (2023).
2. Family Facilitators of, Barriers to and Strategies for Healthy Eating among Chinese Adolescents: Qualitative Interviews with Parent–Adolescent Dyads. Nutrients (2023).
3. Validity and reliability of the Persian version of food preferences questionnaire (Persian-FPQ) in Iranian adolescents. Scientific Reports (2024).
4. An Ecological Perspective of Food Choice and Eating Autonomy Among Adolescents. Frontiers in Psychology (2021).
5. School lunch and snacking patterns among high school students: Associations with school food environment and policies. International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity (2005).