Exploring young Australians’ understanding of sustainable and healthy diets: A qualitative study (2022 Jul)

Ronto, R., Saberi, G., Carins, J., Papier, K., & Fox, E. (2022). Exploring young Australians’ understanding of sustainable and healthy diets: A qualitative study. Public Health Nutrition, 1-13. doi:10.1017/S1368980022001513

Open access link to article: 

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/public-health-nutrition/article/exploring-young-australians-understanding-of-sustainable-and-healthy-diets-a-qualitative-study/4B88F9E0ED4A61EFF37E10CE6AACA0FE

Relevant to: 

Public health nutrition, sustainability

Question: 

Understanding of and motivators of achieving sustainable and healthy diets among young adults

Bottom line for nutrition practice: 

There is a need for the development and evaluation of individual and micro-environmental-based interventions promote sustainable and healthy diets more comprehensively.

Abstract: 

  • Objective: This qualitative study aimed to explore young Australians’ perspectives, motivators and current practices in achieving a sustainable and healthy diet.
  • Design: Semi-structured online interviews were conducted with young Australians. Interviews were audio-recorded using the online Zoom platform, transcribed and analysed using a deductive analysis method by applying the Theoretical Domains Framework and inductive thematic data analysis.
  • Setting: Young Australians recruited via social media platforms, noticeboard announcements and flyers.
  • Subjects: Twenty-two Australians aged 18 to 25 years.
  • Results: The majority of participants were aware of some aspects of a sustainable and healthy diet and indicated the need to reduce meat intake, increase intake of plant-based foods, reduce food wastage and packaging and reduce food miles. Young adults were motivated to adopt more sustainable dietary practices but reported that individual and environmental factors such as low food literacy, limited food preparation and cooking skills, lack of availability and accessibility of environmentally friendly food options and costs associated with sustainable and healthy diets hindered their ability to do so.
  • Conclusions: Given the barriers faced by many of our participants, there is a need for interventions aimed at improving food literacy and food preparation and cooking skills as well as those that create food environments that make it easy to select sustainable and healthy diets. Future research is needed for longitudinal larger scale quantitative studies to confirm our qualitative findings. In addition, the development and evaluation of individual and micro-environmental-based interventions promote sustainable and healthy diets more comprehensively.

Details of results: 

  • Table 2. Themes, subthemes and illustrative quotes fills two and a half pages of the report with useful insights into the population studied.

Of additional interest: 

n/a

Editor’s comment:  

This is not an audience that has a lot of space within this SFS Toolkit. I hope we can change this and get a lot more adolescent and young adult resources.

Conflict of interest/ Funding:  

Macquarie University New Staff Grant (Grant reference number: PURE 109740183) and the Wellcome Trust, Our Planet Our Health (Livestock, Environment and People – LEAP) (Grant number: 205212/Z/16/Z]

External relevant links:  

n/a

Corresponding author: 

Dr Rimante Ronto
Department of Health Sciences, Macquarie University, Australia
Rimante.ronto@mq.edu.au

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