Mudanças no consumo de refeições entre universitários após o primeiro ano acadêmico

Abstract

Upon entering university, the student is subject to numerous psychological, social and economic changes, which often alter the eating behavior, and should receive special attention in relation to health promotion, particularly of food. Objective: To analyze changes in the consumption of meals between university students after the first academic year. Materials and Methods: This is a longitudinal study characterized by a dynamic cohort, carried out with students entering the 21 full-time courses at the Federal University of Mato Grosso, Cuiabá campus. A self-administered questionnaire was used, with questions about sociodemographic and food consumption characteristics. The frequency of consumption of breakfast, morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack, dinner and supper was obtained by the question "On average, how often do you eat the following meals?". The answers being grouped in Regular, Irregular and Never, and evaluated the maintenance or alteration of these frequencies between 2015 and 2016. We estimated the proportions of the variables of interest and used the chi-square test to estimate the association between the variables. Results: The prevalence of maintenance of the regular consumption of the six meals ranged from 90.8% for lunch to 62.6% for dinner. On the other hand, the prevalence of maintenance of omission of meals ranged from 5.7% for breakfast to 33.9% for supper. The main factors associated with eating habits were sex, area of the course, weight status and social class. Conclusion: There were changes in the consumption habits of students after the first academic year at the university.