Assessment of Lifestyle and Eating Habits among a Nationally Representative Sample of Iranian Adolescent Girls: the CASPIAN-V Study

Abstract

Background: The present study assess lifestyle and eating habits of Iranian adolescent girls. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 3207 adolescent girls, aged 12-18 years. Lifestyle and eating habits of adolescents were assessed. Results: The prevalence of overweight was 11.3 and that of obesity was 10.2. The frequencies of daily intake of fruits, dairy products and vegetables were 60.9, 45.6 and 33.5, respectively. Skipping breakfast (15.8) was more frequent than skipping dinner or lunch. Moreover, 10.6 of subjects had fast food daily and 16.2 had fast food weekly. Overall, 55.2 of participants watched television for at least 2 hours a day; and 27.1 reported to have a sleeping time of less than 8 hours a day. Low physical activity, i.e. less than 30 minutes per day, was less frequent among participants with high socio-economic status (SES) compared to those with medium or low SES (57.6 vs. 61.3 and 64.1, respectively, P value = 0.010). Conclusion: Improvement of lifestyle habits should be considered in public health plans for health promotion of adolescent girls and the next generation. Primordial prevention of chronic diseases by improving healthy lifestyle of adolescent girls should be a national public health priority.