Een leuk onderzoek net gepubliceerd in Journal of Adolescent Health. Op dagen dat studenten meer dan 30 minuten babbelen met (een van ) hun ouders, stijgt de kans op het eten van fruit en groente met 14% en de kans op meer dan 30 minuten fysieke activiteit met 50%.
De onderzoekers weten wel niet waar de gesprekken over gaan, het kan dus ook zijn dat de studenten gewoon zo gefrustreerd zijn van hun ouders die aandringen op gezond eten dat ze daarna een half uur in de gym moeten afreageren (grapje).
Meg Small stelt: “It is likely that communication with parents has both direct and indirect effects on college students’ eating and physical activity behaviors. Parents may directly remind students to eat a variety of healthy foods and engage in physical activity. Indirectly, communication with parents may remind students someone cares about their health and well being, and that may motivate them to take better care of themselves.” (bron)
Abstract van het onderzoek:
Purpose: Recent studies suggest that parents maintain influence as their adolescents transition into college. Advances in communication technology make frequent communication between parents and college students easy and affordable. This study examines the protective effect of parent-college student communication on student eating and physical activity behaviors.
Methods: Participants were 746 first-year, first-time, full-time students at a large university in the United States who completed a baseline and 14 daily web-based surveys.
Results: On days when students communicated with their parents for 30 minutes or more, they consumed fruits and vegetables, an additional 14%, more times and were 50% more likely to engage in 30 minutes or more of physical activity, consistent with a protective within-person effect.
Conclusions: Encouraging parents to communicate with their college-aged children could improve these students’ daily eating and physical activity behaviors and should be explored as a relatively easy and affordable component of a student preventive intervention.