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. 2019 Mar 15;19(1):312.
doi: 10.1186/s12889-019-6603-x.

Identifying eating habits in Finnish children: a cross-sectional study

Rejane Augusta de Oliveira Figueiredo  1   2 , Jannina Viljakainen  3   4 , Heli Viljakainen  3   5 , Eva Roos  3   6 , Trine B Rounge  3   4   7 , Elisabete Weiderpass  3   4   7   8   9
Affiliations

Identifying eating habits in Finnish children: a cross-sectional study

Rejane Augusta de Oliveira Figueiredo et al. BMC Public Health. .

Abstract

Background: We aimed to identify different eating habits among Finnish children and to evaluate their association with meal patterns, breakfast consumption, and socio-demographic characteristics in a large, nationwide cohort of children.

Methods: We evaluated 10,569 children aged 9-14 years into the Finnish Health in Teens cohort in a cross-sectional design. The hierarchical K-means method was used to identify groups of children with different eating habits, based on five factors obtained through factor analysis of 10 food items. Multiple correspondence analysis was used to show associations between groups with different eating habits and meal patterns, breakfast patterns, gender, age, and language spoken at home.

Results: Analyses identified three groups: unhealthy eaters (12.3%), fruit and vegetable avoiders (43.3%), and healthy eaters (44.1%). Most children had regular meal and breakfast patterns. The proportion of boys was higher among unhealthy eaters. Unhealthy eaters also showed irregular meal and breakfast patterns, and had parents with low education level. There was a higher proportion of girls among healthy eaters. Healthy eaters also showed regular meal and breakfast patterns, and had parents with high education level.

Conclusions: Although the number of unhealthy eaters was small, special attention should be still paid to these, mostly male children, as they have poor eating habits and they lack regular eating routine. Skipping breakfast was more common among older children and girls, although girls had healthier eating habits overall. Our results can contribute to public health efforts to improve eating behaviours, especially among children with poor eating habits and those skipping healthy food items.

Keywords: Breakfast; Children; Eating habits; Epidemiology; Finland; Healthy eating; Meal pattern.

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Conflict of interest statement

Ethics approval and consent to participate

The Fin-HIT study protocol was approved by the Coordinating Ethics Committee of the Helsinki and Uusimaa Hospital District (decision number 169/13/03/00/10). Informed written consent was obtained from all children and from one legally responsible adult per each child (i.e. parent or legal guardian) according to the Helsinki Declaration.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Average factor loads obtained from factor analysis for unhealthy eaters (unhealthy), fruit and vegetable avoiders (avoiders), and healthy eaters (healthy)
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Map of results of the correspondence analysis. * eating habits are presented with different kind of squares, regular and irregular meal patterns with crosses, regular and irregular breakfast with triangles, languages with circles (Swe – Swedish; Fin – Finnish), age groups with hexagons and gender. R; regular, IR; irregular
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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