Habits and quality of diet

Abstract

Diet, physical activity and sedentary behaviours are the main determinants of health status in adolescence when the lifestyle behaviours may be established to adulthood. In this period, nutritional status vulnerability is determined by the influence of peers and current obesogenic environment. All of them, model body composition, consequently propitiate the onset of future non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as cardiovascular diseases (CVD), or metabolic disorders among others. From a preventable point of view, adequate nutritional interventions must be emphasized during adolescence, as they are really in a vulnerable period in this sense. The selection of the most adequate interventions based on the current data is not an easy task, as most of them have been performed in underdeveloped countries focused on micronutrient deficiencies. This means there is still a knowledge gap which must be filled in the coming years due to the high impact that is expected based on the current numbers of early onset of obesity worldwide, sometimes even accompanied by micronutrient deficiencies due to imbalanced diets. To do this important task, a research gap in the area of dietary assessment method in young populations is required in advance. To facilitate the education programmes of such populations, a common language of dietary patterns rather than nutrients must be emphasized in order to reduce the complexity of healthy nutrition messages.