Evaluation of Fruit Intake and its Relation to Body Mass Index of Adolescents

ABSTRACT

Diets high in fruits and vegetables are recommended to maintain health. However, accurate fruit intake evaluation is hard and high sugar content in most of the fruits suggest possible negative relationships with health indices. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the fruit intake status of adolescents and to examine the relationship between fruit intake and body mass index (BMI). For this, 400 middle and high school students were surveyed for their fruit eating attitude, preference, and intake level for fruit along with the evaluation of their relationship with anthropometric measures. As for fruit preference, the most frequent answer was 'like very much' (60.0%) and the preference of fruit was significantly higher in females than in males (p < 0.01). The highest answer to the reason to like fruits was 'delicious' (67.0%). The highest proportion of subjects replied that the amount of fruit intake was similar in both school meals and at home (39.3%) and unlikable feeling of fruits was 'sour' (47.0%). The favorite fruit was the apple followed by oriental melon, grape, Korean cherry, cherry, tangerine/orange, hallabong, plum, mango, persimmon, peach, pear/kiwi, apricot, Japanese apricot, and fig in order. As for the number of serving sizes per person were 2.9 times/day for male students and 3.0 times/day for female students showing no significant difference. The frequency of eating fruits in the evening showed a significant positive correlation with body weight (p < 0.05) and BMI (p < 0.01), respectively. In summary of these study findings, it was found that the fruit preference of adolescents was relatively high and their fruit intake level satisfied the recommended number of intake. The number of evening fruit intake had a significantly positive correlation with body weight and BMI. Further studies are required to examine the relationship between fruit intake and health indicators.