Abstract Objective To examine whether home availability of energy-dense snack foods mediates the association between television (TV) viewing and energy-dense snack consumption among adolescents. Design Cross-sectional. Setting Secondary schools in Victoria, Australia. Subjects Adolescents (n 2984) from Years 7 and 9 of secondary school completed a web-based survey, between September 2004 and July 2005, assessing their energy-dense snack food consumption, school-day and weekend-day TV viewing and home availability of energy-dense snack foods. Results School-day and weekend-day TV viewing were positively associated with energy-dense snack consumption among adolescent boys (β = 0·003, P < 0·001) and girls (β = 0·03, P < 0·001). Furthermore, TV viewing (school day and weekend day) were positively associated with home availability of energy-dense snack foods among adolescent boys and girls and home availability of energy-dense snack foods was positively associated with energy-dense snack food consumption among boys (β = 0·26, P < 0·001) and girls (β = 0·28, P < 0·001). Home availability partly mediated the association between TV viewing and energy-dense snack consumption. Conclusions The results of the present study suggest that TV viewing has a significant role to play in adolescent unhealthy eating behaviours. Future research should assess the efficacy of methods to reduce adolescent energy-dense snack food consumption by targeting parents to reduce home availability of energy-dense foods and by reducing TV viewing behaviours of adolescents. © The Authors 2012.
CITATION STYLE
Pearson, N., Biddle, S. J. H., Williams, L., Worsley, A., Crawford, D., & Ball, K. (2014). Adolescent television viewing and unhealthy snack food consumption: The mediating role of home availability of unhealthy snack foods. Public Health Nutrition, 17(2), 317–323. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1368980012005204
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