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Childhood experience with vegetable consumption and current body weight status of Kentucky adults
Author(s) -
Wang Changzheng,
Huang Lingyu,
Butler Cecil
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.25.1_supplement.982.3
Subject(s) - overweight , obesity , consumption (sociology) , environmental health , medicine , childhood obesity , body weight , affect (linguistics) , demography , food science , gerontology , psychology , biology , social science , communication , sociology
Low consumption of vegetables may be one of the major reasons for the obesity epidemic in the United States. The objective of the project was to determine how experiences with vegetable consumption in childhood might affect vegetable consumption and body weight status of adults. Visitors to the 2009 Kentucky State Fair were recruited to fill out a questionnaire before they were given a free analysis of their body composition (body fat %) with a Tanita TBF‐521 body composition analyzer. Among the 200 participants, 69% were female and 31% were male; 88% were Caucasian and 9% African Americans. Majority of the participants had positive views of milk and vegetables. Among the people surveyed, over 90% of them prefer fresh vegetables. When they were children, 44% of them were allowed to eat whatever they liked, 41% were given a fixed amount of vegetables to eat, 17% of them were forced to eat vegetables, but nearly 10% had no vegetables. Those who had no vegetables during childhood had the highest rate of overweight (43%) and obesity (25.6%), whereas those who were given a fixed amount of vegetables or had vegetables as snacks had the lowest rate of overweight (27%) and obesity (11.8%). These results indicate that childhood experience with vegetable consumption affects the body weight status of people in their adult life.