Elsevier

Appetite

Volume 50, Issues 2–3, March–May 2008, Pages 455-463
Appetite

Research report
Differentiating between the effect of rapid dietary acculturation and the effect of living away from home for the first time, on the diets of Greek students studying in Glasgow

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2007.09.014Get rights and content

Abstract

The diets of University students, particularly those living away from the family home, are characterised by a number of undesirable practices such as meal skipping, frequent snacking and low intakes of fruits and vegetables. This study aimed to identify the extent to which the previously reported negative changes in the eating habits of Greek students living in Glasgow were the result of rapid dietary acculturation (the ‘Glasgow effect’), and the extent to which these changes were the result of living away from the family home for the first time.

Using a self-administered questionnaire, we assessed the diets before and after commencing university of Greek students living in the family home (n=43) or away from home either in Greece (n=37) or in Glasgow (n=55). No significant changes were observed in the diets of students who continued to live at home after starting university. Significant changes observed only in the students living in Glasgow were decreases in consumption frequency of fresh fruits, meat and cheese, and increases in consumption of snack foods. These changes were attributed to rapid dietary acculturation. Young Greek adults faced difficulties in maintaining a traditional Mediterranean diet after leaving the family home, particularly after moving to a Northern European environment.

Section snippets

Background

The apparent health benefits of the Mediterranean diet were first described by Keys (1970) in the early 1950s. They observed low rates of coronary heart disease in the Mediterranean region, where there was high consumption of olive oil, fruits and vegetables. More recent studies have demonstrated that adherence to the traditional Mediterranean eating pattern may promote longevity (Trichopoulou, 2001), be protective against obesity (Wahlqvist, Kouris-Blazos, & Wattanapenpaiboon, 1999) and is

Subjects

Data from three groups of subjects who participated in two previously conducted studies were included in the present study. In the first study (Papadaki & Scott, 2002), all Greek postgraduate students enrolled in a postgraduate course for the academic session 1999–2000 at the University of Glasgow, Scotland (n=84) were invited to participate in a dietary behaviour study. Subjects were recruited through the University Hellenic Association and were required to be of Greek nationality, to have

Sample characteristics

Greek students in Glasgow were almost equally divided by gender whereas the majority of Greek students in Greece were females. However, there was no statistically significant difference in gender between the three groups (Table 1). There was a statistically significant difference in mean age between the three groups. Students in Glasgow were on average older than students in Greece. This was not unexpected as the majority of students in Glasgow were postgraduate students whereas the students in

Discussion

Numerous studies of the dietary habits of university students have highlighted a variety of undesirable practices such as meal skipping (Ilow, 2005), frequent snacking (Bellisle, Monneuse, Steptoe, & Wardle, 1995) and low intakes of fruits and vegetables (Debate, Topping, & Sargent, 2001; Mazicioglu & Ozturk, 2003). In this study, we found that student life without leaving the family home did not appear to have a major impact on the dietary habits of Greek students studying in Greece. However,

Conclusions

The results of the present study indicate that not only students who temporarily translocated from Greece to Scotland, but also, Greek students who left their family home for the first time but remained in Greece found difficulties in preserving their traditional eating patterns. These negative dietary changes were not observed in Greek students living at home and thus cannot be attributed to student life per se. It seems that once away from the family environment young Greek adults find it

Conflict of interest

The author(s) declare that they have no conflict of interests.

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the assistance of those students in Glasgow and Greece who participated in this study. LSK was supported by a scholarship from the Aristides Daskalopoulos Foundation, Greece.

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