Eating habits and nutritional knowledge in adolescents

Introduction: During adolescence, young people are taking responsibility for their own eating habits, health attitudes and behaviours and create lifelong lasting habits. Methods: This paper is dealing with eating habits and nutritional knowledge of a group of Croatian adolescents in secondary school, aged 17–19 years. During school time, 117 adolescents completed the modified General Nutrition Knowledge Questionnaire. Results: Overweight prevalence was 16.0 and 6.0 % in boys and girls, respectively. Underweight prevalence was 13.0 and 4.0 % in girls and boys, respectively. 29.9 % of participants are dieting. TV is a major source of information about food and nutrition. 28.2 % of participants showed satisfactory knowledge about nutrients, energy requirements and dietary recommendations. Only 28.2 % of participants showed satisfactory knowledge regarding relationship between certain food and certain nutrient and 29.1 % showed satisfying knowledge regarding diet – disease relationship. Breakfast skipping is reported in 63.2 % of participants, and most of them (38.5 %) consume 3 meals per day. Fruit and vegetables, as well as fish consummation is below recommended while the consumption of meat, soft drinks and sweets is above recommended. Conclusion: The results pointed out weak spots in nutritional knowledge and revealed unhealthy eating habits. That information is necessary for developing new nutrition strategies and actions to improve nutritional knowledge and eating habits.