Letramento Alimentar de Adolescentes

Abstract

Food literacy recognizes the impact of environmental factors on people's ability to develop and apply knowledge, skills, and behaviors essential for healthy eating. Indeed, increasing food literacy as a means of decreasing the burden of nutrition related chronic noncommunicable diseases is a growing role for public health professionals. Adolescence is a phase of the life cycle, considered as a critical period for the formation of appropriate habits, which will definitely interfere with quality of life. In this context, this study aimed to evaluate food literacy among adolescents, regarding the dimensions access, understanding, evaluation and application of information about food. The specific objectives were: to carry out a systematic review of the literature about food literacy among adolescents; to develop an instrument to evaluate food literacy among adolescents, as well as to assess its content validity and reliability, and to describe the levels of food literacy among adolescents of public schools in Montes Claros - MG. Initially, a systematic literature review was performed using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) checklist. Subsequently, an instrument capable of assessing the levels of food literacy among adolescents was developed, and its content validity and reliability were assessed by testing and retesting with 60 participants. The instrument developed was called “Letramento Alimentar entre Adolescente (LAA)”. The data were collected by trained academics, who used the software developed for this purpose. Descriptive analyses were done using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences - SPSS, version 25.0. The systematic review identified nine studies that used questionnaires, instruments and/or equipment to assess food literacy among adolescents. The researches that built or used instruments showed some limitations, such as assessing only nutrition-related knowledge and behavior, leaving a gap regarding the real effect of food literacy on adolescents' health. As for the development of the instrument, it was applied to 60 adolescents, with respect to the estimated reliability, the estimated internal consistency or Cronbach's alpha was 0.82. To evaluate the food literacy, we considered questions that addressed the access to information, understanding, evaluation and application of information about eating habits. In this stage of the instrument's evaluation, 734 students participated, being 236 aged 12 and 498 aged 15, with response rates of 47.58% and 100%, respectively. It can be observed that, regarding the variable access, 9.3% (n=68) of students reported never having had access to any information about proper nutrition. The main person/professional who provided this information to these adolescents was the nurse (91.6% / n= 663), and the radio was the main medium (90.2% / n=654). 80.0% of respondents (n= 585) reported having had access to the topic "Healthy and unhealthy eating". Most respondents reported difficulties in understanding, evaluating and applying information about healthy eating. Based on the diagnosis of food literacy among the adolescent participants, a specific educational intervention is suggested to improve the skills of understanding, evaluation and application of information related to food.