Fruit and vegetable consumption may help reduce the risk of developing chronic disease, obesity and stroke and therefore, fruit and vegetables should be added into each person’s healthy eating plan.
Young adult’s developmental stage is characterized by transition from parental control to personal control. When young men move out of home and set up their own place, they become responsible for their eating. Poor food habits, adopted through adolescent years, have long-term effects on individual’s health and can be transmitted across generations, as young adults become parents.The purposes of this paper are to analyze community issue such as insufficient fruit and vegetables intake by Canadian adolescent and young adult males and identify contributing factors (age, household income and education) that influence the pattern of fruit and vegetable consuming in this population. Population health is “the health of a population as measured by health-status indicators and as influenced by social, economic, and physical environments; personal health practices; individual capacity and coping skills; human biology; early childhood development; and health services” (The Population Health Approach) .
Different conditions, in which people are born, grow, live, and work will determine the health of population. Socio-demographic and lifestyle factors influencing fruit and vegetable intake were considered in research conducted by Azagba and Sharaf in 2011. Cross-sectional study used data of 131,000 individuals of the Canadian population aged 12 and over from the Canadian Community Health Survey (2007). They figured out that males consumed less fruit and vegetables then females, single less than married, smokers less than non-smokers.The lowest consumption was found among males, single, smokers, with weak social interaction.
In addition, fruit and vegetable intake of individuals with low-income and education was lower in comparing with high income-educated people (Azagba&Sharaf, 2011). Relevant findings were found in cross-sectional study performed by Riediger, Shooshtari and Moghadasian in 2007. Researchers based their study on samples from the Canadian Community Health Survey (2007) to determine patterns of fruit and vegetable intake among Canadian adolescents and identify those at risk of developing poor eating habits.Two age groups (12-14 years old and 15-19 years old) were organized from 18, 524 Canadian adolescents.
The study found that fruit and vegetable intake decreased with increasing age. These findings were associated with increased independence and decision-making among adolescents. Males reported lower fruit and vegetable consuming than females (Riediger et al. , 2007).
In addition, household education and income were associated with consumption. Even number of parent matters; in particular, in single-parent family adolescents ate less fruit and vegetables than those lived with two parents (Riediger et al. 2007). Therefore, the consumption of the male teenagers 12-14 years old was influenced mainly by their parents’ income; more fruit and vegetables were consumed in middle- and high-income families. In older adolescent male group education regarding the benefits of healthier foods such as fruit and vegetables played significant role in increasing of consumption and developing healthy eating patterns for life.
Consuming of fruit and vegetables among Canadian adolescent and young adult males are greatly influenced by social factors, food culture, nutritional knowledge, dietary approach and marketing strategies.According to Statistics Canada, average household spent 10. 2 per cent on food in comparing with 18. 7 per cent in 1969. (Davison, 2011) Note.
Adapted from http://www. cbc. ca/news/canada/story/2011/10/06/f-food-prices. html As data shows, food prices, especially for fruit and vegetables, have continuously risen over the last 50 years, but the percentage of household spending on food has notably fallen (Davison, 2011). There is a big concern that due to rising food prices, people would cut back on fruit and vegetables and prefer to buy fast- food instead.
According to Mikkonen and Raphael (2010, p. 26), about 2. 7 million Canadians (or 9 percent Canadian households) faced food insecurity. Healthier food costs more. Poor individuals are likely to have poor nutritional status and experience deficit of vitamins and minerals, essential for the proper functioning of all systems within the body.
Mikkonen and Raphael (2010, p. 12) said that income was “the most important social determinant of health. " They have revealed the facts that living in the poor neighbourhoods resulted in shorter life expectancies for men (Mikkonen and Raphael, 2010, p. 2). Food poverty problems are faced by adolescents in low-income families, whose parents find difficult to develop a well-balanced healthy diet and who often experience food insecurity. Challenges, confront with low-income population’s dietary choice, need to be taken into consideration when evaluating fruit and vegetable intake among adolescent and young adult males.
After moving out parent’s home on their own, young adult males are more likely to live in poor housing or in unsafe communities due to money shortage.There is usually a lack of grocery stores selling fresh fruit and vegetables and lack of transportation to get to farmer markets. In addition, deficiency of proper cooking amenities at the rental place and lack of cooking skills may increase the tendency to buy fast-food instead of fruit and vegetables. Finally, according to historically developed stereotypes, some food such as red meat is considered to be “masculine” in comparing with “feminine” food such as fruit and vegetables. In 2009, the study was design by Lipschitz among male Toronto University students to identify how the food stereotypes could affect the behavior pattern.The study revealed that when given a choice between meat-lovers pizza and vegetarian pizza, young males preferred meat pizza as more masculine food (Lipschitz, 2009).
It is a one of the possible reasons why young males generally eat less fruit and vegetables as they try to avoid “feminine” food. Mikkonen and Raphael (2010, p. 15) stressed the importance of education as a social determinant of health. Generally, the higher education, the higher level of income will be and therefore, the more opportunity for the person to be healthier.
Fruit and vegetable consumption are increased with education due to improved knowledge about benefits of healthier food. Finally, education helps enhance personal health and well-being and build up skills to assess and encourage individual’s own healthier behavior. Ability to learn gives people opportunity to take more control over personal health and be prepared to cope with diseases or injuries if occurs (The Ottawa Chapter for Health Promotion). Paulo Freire, an educator from Brazil, argued that individuals from oppressed groups have an urgent need for education to achieve something.His ‘pedagogy of the oppressed’ was developed to educate those whose voices are not heard or ignored. (Smith, 1997, 2002).
Freire’s model is a model of equity and social justice. He believed that educated people have a duty to teach poor and oppressed individuals to make them known. Adolescent teaching about healthier diet is important yet complicated. Some schools have implemented nutritional programs, where students receive free fruit and vegetable snack. One of this called the Northern Fruit and Vegetable Program was examined by Meizi, Beynon, Gritke, Henderson, Kurtz, Sangster-Bouck, St.Onge, van Zandvoort, Chevrier-Lamoureux, and Warren in 2012.
The qualitative study involved one hundred thirty-nine students from grades 5-8. Students tried new fruits and vegetables at school, and they were positive about it. Participants became aware of the health benefits of fruit and vegetables and confirmed increased consumption at school and home (Meizi et al. , 2012). Therefore, a comprehensive fruit- and vegetable-promoting school-based program was useful and beneficial in increasing fruit and vegetables consumption between adolescent males.
Community nurses are at front line of health promotion.They use research evidence in designing health promotions for adolescent and young adult males to encourage the sufficient intake of fruit and vegetables. School nurses can use nutritional assessment tools to follow the comprehensive fruit- and vegetable-promoting school-based program and support high fruit and vegetable consumption. Teaching of young adult males, especially those with low-income or socially marginalized, could be challenging.
Community health nurses can play an important role in promoting the health and well-being and changing the common view that eating fruit and vegetables is not a part of young men culture.Often health associations such as Heart and Stroke Foundation, Canadian Cancer Society, the Canadian Diabetes Association and hospitals get involved in the education process by health promotion campaigns and can insist on making and implementing public policies. Large government agencies can launch publications and campaigns, based on a result of research supporting sufficient fruit and vegetable consumption. Health care organizations and community nurses should be aware and educate others about poverty that creates ill-health.Poverty pushes people into areas with dirty water and inadequate sanitation that make them sick. Moreover, poor people experience hunger and nutrition deficit that makes them prone to diseases.
In addition poor people have less access to health services. Finally poor people are usually not informed well about health risks due to lack of education, and they work in dangerous environment that can harm their health. Raphael (2011) discusses different ways to reduce poverty in Canada and improve health and quality of life.On of them is involving in politics. By supporting candidates of left political party everybody can make an effort to develop poverty reduction policies in the future (Raphael, 2011, p.
459) Fruit and vegetables are sufficient elements of healthy diet and play an important role in preventing chronic diseases. However, statistic data suggested that Canadian adolescent and young adult males did not meet recommendations for fruit and vegetable intake and there is an urgent need in increasing fruit and vegetable consumption among this population.Challenges influencing fruit and vegetable consumption are not only based on individual’s choices, but greatly correlate with social, historical, politic and economic situation in the community. Poverty highly affects fruit and vegetables availability and people's capacity to make healthy preference.
Lack of knowledge related to benefits of fruit and vegetables intake and food stereotypes may be barriers to improve fruit and vegetable consumption. Knowledge helps increase awareness about benefits of healthy eating. In addition, education fosters developing the skills and attitudes ecessary for healthy lifestyle. Breaking stereotypes about “masculine” and “feminine” foods promote change in the behavior pattern. Community nurses together with people making decisions need to give priority to interventions that are adaptable, community-based and theoretically grounded.
Creating a supportive social and policy environment such as awareness and advocacy campaigns, free fruit and vegetable snack school programs, and appropriate food transport and storage will benefit increasing fruit and vegetable consumption among Canadian adolescent and young adult males.
