Teens not keen

A study that The Packer's Susie Cable pointed me to from the February issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine reveals predictably bad news about teens and fruit and vegetable consumption.
From the abstract:

Diets abundant in fruits and vegetables are associated with reduced risk for chronic disease, but intakes of adolescents are often inadequate. To design effective interventions it is important to understand how dietary intake changes longitudinally during adolescence and to monitor progress in the population toward fruit and vegetable consumption recommendations. The objective of this study was to examine longitudinal and secular trends in fruit and vegetable intake among two cohorts of Minnesota adolescents over the period 1999–2004.

Longitudinal trends indicated that adolescents decreased their daily intake of fruit and vegetables by an average of 0.7 servings during the transition from early to middle adolescence and by 0.6 servings from middle to late adolescence. Analyses of age-matched secular trends at middle adolescence showed a mean daily decrease of 0.7 servings among girls and 0.4 servings among boys between 1999 and 2004.


TK: The upshot of the report is that more research is needed to understand why teens are eating less fruits and vegetables as they go from middle school to high school. The intuitive answer is that they need more access to fruits and vegetables at schools, such as could be provided the fruit and vegetable snack program.
Another factor may be the heavy advertising promotions by companies like Twizzler and Coke and other nutritionally challenged foods compared with the paltry advertising for fruits and vegetables. Beyond the food safety issue, the industry needs a national promotion agreement to establish its pitch to each demographic group, including teens.

Look at how many celebrities have been a part of the Got Milk? campaign. How much more would celebrities get excited over a huge media campaign for fresh produce!? We may never know.