Browsing by Author "Weckström, Linda"

Goals. The goal of this bachelor’s thesis is to investigate and describe 9th graders’ eating habits. Previous studies have shown that teenagers eat irregularly and skip important meals. In addition, studies show that especially boys eat less fruits and vegetables than is recommended. On the other hand, girls seem to skip more meals during the day but also consume more delicacies than boys. Based on previous studies, my hypothesis is that teenagers’ eating habits do not follow current recommendations. Many previous studies have been focusing on teenagers’ school time eating and families’ food practices but in my opinion teenagers’ eating overall needs more attention. This thesis concentrates on teenagers’ overall eating on work days: before, during and after the school day. Also, the goal is to define which factors influence teenagers eating habits. Methods. The focus group of this thesis were students on 9th grade and the data was collected using food diaries. The food diaries were collected in two different cities, in two separate schools. Altogether 20 students took part in the study, from which 9 were from Helsinki and 11 from Vantaa. The gathered data was analysed thematically and by using tabulation. Results and conclusion. Meal rhythm was quite irregular among teenagers. From all meals students skipped school lunch most frequently. Also, breakfast was skipped often but dinner instead was eaten quite regularly. Majority of students consumed fruits and vegetables daily. Eating delicacies was not as common as eating fruits and vegetables but every third ate del-icacies on a daily basis. Gender was significant factor influencing on teenagers eating habits: on average girls ate all meals scantier than boys. In addition, weekday also had a slight im-pact on students’ eating, students ate more regularly in the beginning of the week. Location of the schools also somewhat affected on students eating, for students from Helsinki ate most of their daily meals more regularly compared to students from Vantaa, but on the other hand also delicacy consumption was more frequent in Helsinki.