Background to the Research

• This study aims to contribute to the development of an effective food risk communications strategy directed at young people. The various stages of the research aimed to establish a baseline understanding of young people's knowledge of food related issues and their reported dietary behaviour, in order to identify the potential barriers to long-term healthy eating and factors affecting the reception of food risk communications. This would then allow the clarification of pathways that may promote a healthy diet in this population and the identification of possible influences for food risk communications.
  

Research Approach

• This two year study involved 5,000 adolescents aged 12-17 years sampled from across the island of Ireland.
• Three methods were employed:
  • Twelve focus groups mapped out the complex ways in which young people understand nutritional issues and food risks.
  • A survey was conducted with 3,436 randomly selected adolescents from 80 schools across the island of Ireland (NI and ROI).
  • Two experimental studies were conducted on a strategic sample of over 1300 adolescents across both regions.
• Participants were given one of a number of dietary communications about snacking embedded in a questionnaire of pre- and post-measures of dietary attitudes and beliefs. Communications encouraged or discouraged snacking behaviour; contained advice that varied in the certainty surrounding the benefits or costs of snacking; and reported how stable scientific advice had been on snacking behaviour over time.
  

Main Findings

• Adolescents' diets vary across populations, with several patterns of variation in eating behaviour being noted. Girls reported a more healthy diet that did boys; adolescents from more affluent backgrounds reported a better diet; and ROI respondents reported a better diet than their NI counterparts. Adolescents' evaluations of their own diet as healthy or unhealthy matched a measure of current eating behaviour.
• While adolescents are aware of expert opinion about the benefits and risks of dietary behaviour, this does not translate into healthier eating behaviour. Most participants showed a broad understanding of the dietary practices recommended by experts, with a broad range of knowledge levels across the population, for example girls showed greater nutritional knowledge than boys. However, those from more affluent families did not show higher knowledge levels and NI respondents had much greater knowledge levels despite their poorer reported diet.
• Adolescents' oversimplified understanding of food may constitute a barrier to healthy eating. Tastes and other sensory qualities of foods were the primary determinants of food choice, rather than knowledge of expert opinion. The majority of adolescents preferred energy dense foods such as fast foods and sweets, while more micro-nutrient foods were often reported as undesirable due to their bland or unpleasant tastes. Adolescents were of the opinion that the tasty energy dense foods they preferred were inherently bad and any foods that were considered to be good for you would not be tasty. Few understood that all foods were acceptable as part of a well-balanced diet.
• For some adolescents, concerns about obesity appear to lead to food being selected on the basis of weight control rather than nutritional motivation. Obesity was viewed extremely negatively and weight control was associated with self-esteem and attractiveness. Girls reported much more concern than boys regarding weight control. Weight control measures were also heavily gendered, with boys preferring exercise and girls dietary regulation. While most young people associated dietary regulation with health risks, some girls did report engaging in dietary regulation.
• Respondents who identified as overweight reported less control over their diets and also reported being more motivated by weight control than nutrition in their selection of foods.
• Adolescents are not passive information processors but actively interpret new information against their previous knowledge. They take a range of information sources into account in relation to their dietary behaviour, with parental and peer opinion and personal experience ranking highly. Boys reported lower levels of influence than girls.
• Adolescents have different opinions about different food risks and the threats of expert uncertainty concerning these risks. Adolescents perceive natural food risks as more threatening and relevant to their everyday lives than artificial ones.
• The experimental manipulations suggest that the level of certainty in dietary communications does have an effect upon adolescents' perceptions. Messages conveying uncertainty may be perceived in the same manner as those conveying certain health costs.

Conclusions/Implications

• Adolescents as a group have a very distinctive profile of attitudes and concerns in relation to dietary behaviour. Adolescents are not a homogeneous group. Profiling the sections of the population most vulnerable to health risks may enable a more effective delivery of dietary information.
• As higher levels of knowledge of expert opinion alone do not have a substantial effect on health of diet, education programmes alone are unlikely to substantially change eating behaviour. Focussing on topics which are particular to adolescent everyday life is more likely to have an impact.
• Challenging young people to engage with more complex representations of their diet and food risks should enable them to better link abstract dietary information and practical experience.
• Adolescents have a set of concerns and self-concepts characteristic of their particular life-stage and distinct from those of children or adults. Dietary communications should be targeted at adolescents as adolescents.
• Dietary communications which emphasise the negative consequences of obesity rather than the positive effects of healthy eating could potentially have a negative impact upon the diet of young people.
• Communicators need to take into account how their message fits with adolescents' common-sense understanding of food risks, as well as how they are likely to receive message characteristics.
• Communicators need to tailor the communication to adolescents' understandings of particular food risks and consider the specific effects of conveying uncertainty about each topic.
• Complexity and two-sidedness of food risk information can be conveyed without loss of information.