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Updated: Dec 3, 2025

Assessment of Social Transmission of Food Preferences Behaviors
Published on: January 25, 2018
Associations between family structure and adolescents' food habits
Anne-Siri Fismen1, Otto Robert Frans Smith1, Oddrun Samdal2
1Department of Health Promotion, Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Bergen5015, Norway.
Objective:
To investigate family structure differences in adolescents' consumption of fruit, vegetables, sweets and sugar-added soft drinks with adjustments for socio-demographic and socio-economic variables.
Design:
Cross-sectional data from the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children survey.
Setting:
Norwegian primary and secondary schools.
Participants:
Adolescents (n 4475) aged 11, 13, 15 and 16 years.
Results:
After adjusting for covariates, living in a single-mother family was associated with lower vegetable consumption (OR 0·76, 95 % CI 0·63, 0·91) and higher soft drink consumption (OR 1·29, 95 % CI 1·06, 1·57). Living in a mother and stepfather family was negatively associated with fruit (OR 0·71, 95 % CI 0·54, 0·95) and vegetable (OR 0·72, 95 % CI 0·54, 0·97) consumption. Living in a single-father family was associated with lower sweets consumption (OR 0·48, 95 % CI 0·32, 0·72). No significant interactions were demonstrated between family structure and socio-demographic or socio-economic covariates.
Conclusions:
The study suggests that an independent association between family structure and adolescents' food habits exists.
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