| Objective. In order to plan effective public health interventions aimed at increasing fruit and vegetable consumption in college students, the present study aimed to: (1) analyze the reported eating habits of college students in order to categorize their fruit and vegetable consumption as achieving 80% or more, 51--80%, or less than 51% of the recommended standard using the Healthy Eating Index (HEI) criteria; and (2) determine if demographic variables, environmental factors and health behaviors are significantly associated with HEI categories of fruit and vegetable intake.;Methods. The Campus Environment, Diet and Activity (CEDA) study was used to gather data on food consumption and health behavior patterns in college freshmen enrolled at Texas A&M University. Descriptive statistics were used to categorize fruit and vegetable intake using criteria from the Healthy Eating Index (HEI), and the chi-square test was used to analyze fruit and vegetable intake categories with respect to gender, race/ethnicity, BMI category, frequency of eating at fast food restaurants, monthly grocery purchases, travel to food locations, and reinforcements of healthy eating. To verify whether or not there was a negative association between the sedentary behavior of the participants and their fruit, vegetable, and total fruit and vegetable intake categories, the Kruskal-Wallis non-parametric one way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used. Analysis was conducted at the 0.05 level of significance.;Results. Out of a total of 235 participants, more than half consumed less than 51% of the recommendations for fruit intake (57.7%) and vegetable intake (77.3%). In addition, the following variables were found to be significantly associated: fruit intake and gender, vegetable intake and gender, vegetable intake and travel to an off-campus cafe/coffee shop, vegetable intake and travel to an off-campus regular restaurant, fruit intake and the health belief that fruit and vegetable variety promote healthy eating (p<0.05).;Conclusion. This study is the first to use fruit and vegetable intake categories based on the Healthy Eating Index (HEI) to verify that a majority of college freshman fail to meet fruit and vegetable recommendations. Factors found to be significantly associated with fruit and vegetable intake should be further explored and acknowledged in future health promotion and educational efforts. |
