Habitos alimentarios de la población adolescente escolarizada en la ciudad de bragança-portugal

Abstract

Diet is one of the lifestyle components which have most influence in health, thus crucially determining physical and intellectual development (Torres et al., 1998). Therefore, the study of eating habits appears to play a key role, not only in the identification of what individuals consume as far as food is concerned, but also, in determining the factors on which their choice of food is based. The aim of this study is to: 1- determine adolescents' socio-familiar data 2- determine subjective anthropometric rates 3- do research on food ingestion in adolescents attending school in Bragança 4- know school adolescents' eating habits in Bragança 5- determine adolescents' perception of body image 6- describe adolescents' physical activity 7- do research on habits related to health. A descriptive, observational, transversal study involving 600 adolescents aged between 12 and 18 was carried out using a self-filling survey. The resources used in results analysis were those of descriptive statistics, parametric and non-parametric tests. In the light of the results, we are able to conclude that the ingested average doses in each food group are far from those recommended in the Portuguese Food Balance Wheel. Statistically, the doses are significantly lower than the recommended ones, except for the groups of milk and dairy products; and meat, fish and eggs. In these two groups, ingestion is significantly higher than recommended. As far as perception of body is concerned, 12% of boys and 23.5% of girls see themselves as obese, whereas 61.2% of boys and 83.6% of girls admit being concerned with overweight. Extracurricular physical exercise is done by 53.9% of youngsters. Boys and younger adolescents are those who do the most exercise. Among the most performed activities are: football; other (dance and body-building); and basketball. The majority of teenagers attending school in Bragança do not drink alcohol (63.4%). Those who drink alcohol ingest beer most frequently (51.9%), followed by spirits (18.5%).