Associations between family structure and adolescents’ food habits

Abstract

Objective: To investigate family structure differences in adolescents’ consumption of fruit, vegetables, sweets and sugar-added soft drinks with adjustments for socio-demographic and socio-economic variables.

Design: Cross-sectional data from the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children survey.

Setting: Norwegian primary and secondary schools.

Participants: Adolescents (n 4475) aged 11, 13, 15 and 16 years.

Results: After adjusting for covariates, living in a single-mother family was associated with lower vegetable consumption (OR 0·76, 95 % CI 0·63, 0·91) and higher soft drink consumption (OR 1·29, 95 % CI 1·06, 1·57). Living in a mother and stepfather family was negatively associated with fruit (OR 0·71, 95 % CI 0·54, 0·95) and vegetable (OR 0·72, 95 % CI 0·54, 0·97) consumption. Living in a single-father family was associated with lower sweets consumption (OR 0·48, 95 % CI 0·32, 0·72). No significant interactions were demonstrated between family structure and socio-demographic or socio-economic covariates.

Conclusions: The study suggests that an independent association between family structure and adolescents’ food habits exists.