[Adherence to the Mediterranean diet pattern and self-concept in adolescents]

Introduction: adolescence is characterized by being a decisive phase that consolidates both the personality development (attending to various psychosocial factors that influence), and the achievement of habits that will be established in adulthood. Objectives: to relate the adherence to the Mediterranean diet (MD) in adolescents with the self-concept dimensions. Methods: cross-sectional observational study of the adherence to MD level through the MEDAS-14 test and perception of the academic, social, emotional, family and physical dimensions of the self-concept, evaluated through the AF-5 test in 600 adolescents from the south of Spain. Results: the adherence to MD was positively related to the academic level, age and academic self-concept (r = 0.19 to 0.33, p < 0.01), being predicted by 13% of the variance explained by the academic self-concept, and 13.8%, for the academic and social self-concept (p < 0.01). In addition, 58.3% of adolescents presented high adherence to MD and 13.3% and 28.3%, low and medium adherence to MD, respectively, with a mean of 8.8 points, corresponding to an average assessment. Conclusions: the main findings of this study show that adherence to MD is related to academic and social self-concept, age and academic level, which reflects clear food awareness as these variables are evidenced. In addition, adolescents have an average adherence to MD, corresponding to a strict dietary pattern, although not healthy.