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Faculty Mentor

Dr. Lacey McCormack

Abstract

Background: Meal planning has been shown to be positively associated with a more healthful diet among adults; however, there is not much information on how meal planning is associated with young adults, which is why it is important that more research is done on this topic. The goal of this project was to determine the associations between meal planning and a healthy diet for incoming college freshmen at eight universities that participated in the GetFRUVED study.

Results: 1,149 first-year college students passed the initial required criteria to participate in the study. The results from this data collection were analyzed to compare important dietary consumption numbers that participants recorded, and knowledge and time spent on meal planning with the baseline GetFRUVED data. For this study, more meal planners tended to have a higher intake of fruit and veggies, fiber, whole grains, fruit and veggies excluding French fries, and NCI fruit and veggie score, as well as a lower intake of sugar, sugar without cereal, and sugar from sugar-sweetened beverages. Controversially, there were no associations between more meal planners and calcium, dairy, and BMI.

Conclusions: Meal planning might be the key to our country’s growing problem of obesity, especially in young adults. More information on meal planning for this age group needs to be gathered so that interventions can be created to address potential barriers, which will help make achieving a healthier diet easier.

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Nutrition Commons

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