No / The number of young people in Europe who are not in education, employment or training (NEET) is increasing.
Given that young people from disadvantaged backgrounds tend to have diets of poor nutritional
quality, this exploratory study sought to understand barriers and facilitators to healthy eating and dietary
health promotion needs of unemployed young people aged 16–20 years. Three focus group discussions
were held with young people (n = 14). Six individual interviews and one paired interview with service
providers (n = 7). Data were recorded, transcribed verbatim and thematically content analysed. Themes
were then fitted to social cognitive theory (SCT). Despite understanding of the principles of healthy eating,
a ‘spiral’ of interrelated social, economic and associated psychological problems was perceived to render
food and health of little value and low priority for the young people. The story related by the young people
and corroborated by the service providers was of a lack of personal and vicarious experience with food.
The proliferation and proximity of fast food outlets and the high perceived cost of ‘healthy’ compared
to ‘junk’ food rendered the young people low in self-efficacy and perceived control to make healthier
food choices. Agency was instead expressed through consumption of junk food and drugs. Both the young
people and service providers agreed that for dietary health promotion efforts to succeed, social problems
needed to be addressed and agency encouraged through (individual and collective) active engagement
of the young people themselves.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BRADFORD/oai:bradscholars.brad.ac.uk:10454/6780 |
| Date | January 2015 |
| Creators | Davison, J., Share, M., Hennessy, M., Stewart-Knox, Barbara |
| Source Sets | Bradford Scholars |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Article, not applicable paper |
| Rights | © 2015 Elsevier. Reproduced in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. “This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Appetite. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Appetite, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2014.11.010. |
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