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Gender differences in adolescent food preferences and their association with parent food preferences: data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS)

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Abstract

Purpose

Food preference is an important factor that affects one’s eating behavior and dietary intake. Parent food preferences and food choices may influence children food preferences. This study is aimed to describe gender differences and time trends of Chinese adolescent food preferences and to explore the association between adolescent and their parent food preferences.

Methods

The data were drawn from four waves of the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) conducted between 2006 and 2015. Participants were asked to indicate their degree of preferences for five food categories (fast food, salty snack food, fruits, vegetables, and soft/sugary drinks) using a 5-point Likert scale (from “dislike very much” to “like very much”). Logistic regression was performed to determine the association of food preferences between adolescents and their parents.

Results

Adolescent preferences for unhealthy foods were significantly higher than those of adults. Adolescent food preferences for fruits and vegetables decreased slightly over nine years, and there were gender differences in healthy food preferences (girls > boys, P < 0.05). Regardless of boys or girls, adolescent food preferences for healthy foods (fruits and vegetables) were significantly associated with both their fathers (OR: 3.64–4.58 for boys and 2.71–4.39 for girls) and mothers (OR: 2.13–4.11 for boys and 3.07–5.66 for girls) food preferences. For fast food and salty snack food preferences, boys appeared to be influenced greater by their fathers than girls, while girls appeared to be influenced greater by their mothers than boys.

Conclusions

The present study reveals a high degree of unhealthy food preferences among Chinese adolescents and a gender-specific association of fast food and salty snack preference between Chinese adolescents and their parents. Our results may be useful for interventions to reduce adolescent unhealthy food preferences and intakes.

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Data availability

The dataset is available upon reasonable request from the corresponding author.

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Acknowledgements

This research uses data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS). We are grateful for research grant funding from the National Institute for Health (NIH), the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) for R01 HD30880, the National Institute on Aging (NIA) for R01 AG065357, the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) for R01DK104371 and R01HL108427, the NIH Fogarty grant D43 TW009077 since 1989, and the China-Japan Friendship Hospital, Ministry of Health for support for CHNS 2009, the Chinese National Human Genome Center at Shanghai since 2009, and the Bei**g Municipal Center for Disease Prevention and Control since 2011. We thank the National Institute for Nutrition and Health, China Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Bei**g Municipal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Chinese National Human Genome Center at Shanghai.

Funding

This study was funded by the Peking University Research Initiation Fund (grant number: BMU2018YJ005) in China. This funding did not play any role in the design of the study and in the writing of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Maternal and Child Health, School of Public Health, Peking University, Bei**g, China

    **yao Liu, Yujie Wen & Qianling Zhou

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  1. **yao Liu
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  2. Yujie Wen
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Contributions

QZ and XL conceived the study. XL obtained the data and analyzed the results. XL and YW drafted the manuscript. QZ supervised in drafting the manuscript. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Qianling Zhou.

Ethics declarations

Ethics approval

The CHNS study was approved by the Institutional Review Board at the University of North Carolina and the National Institute of Nutrition and Health, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (the ethical approval number was not available). Consent was obtained from all the participants included in the study.

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Not applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare no potential commercial or financial interest in this study.

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Liu, X., Wen, Y. & Zhou, Q. Gender differences in adolescent food preferences and their association with parent food preferences: data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS). Eur J Nutr (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00394-024-03450-7

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