A Review on Determinants of Nutritional Behavior in Teenagers

Context Adolescence is associated with important physical, mental, and social changes leading to rapid changes in behavioral patterns including nutritional behaviors. The nutritional behaviors of individuals as well as changing those behaviors should be recognized to design an effective program. The present study sets to recognize determinants of the adolescents’ nutritional behaviors based on the social-ecological model. Evidence Acquisition In an extensive literature review, all Farsi and English articles adopted quantitative studies, which were either cross-sectional, longitudinal, or clinical trials. Furthermore, all Farsi and English qualitative studies published from 1990 to 2016 were reviewed. For this purpose, Scopus, Medline, Embase, Cochrane central register of controlled trials and Cochrane database systematic review databases, as well as Farsi databases including Iranmedex, SID, and Magiran were searched. Keywords included nutritional behaviors of teenagers (eating breakfast, fruits, and vegetables, fast foods, unhealthy snacks) and determinant factors. After extracting the effective factors, they were categorized into social-ecological mode. Results Since ecological models are focused on individuals’ interactions with cultural, environmental, and social factors, applying them to determine the effective factors, and designing interventions based on these factors could enhance the programs for improvement of teenagers’ nutritional behaviors. Conclusions Changes in intrapersonal and environmental factors could have a more effective role in making changes in teenagers’ nutritional behaviors. Since some of these factors become key factors in different social-cultural contexts, nutritional changes in societies have a decisive role in their significance. The significance level of factors and their effect on the target society must be considered for designing more effective interventions.