COMPARATIVE STUDY ABOUT SOME EATING HABITS IN SIX COUNTRIES: EATING OUT AND FAST FOOD CONSUMPTION

Resumo

Poor diets have proven very detrimental for the maintenance of a good health, and eating excessive fast food and highly processed meals can have a negative impact on the general health status of the population. Hence, this work investigated the habits related to eating out of home and frequency of eating fast food meals in participants from six different countries. A cross-sectional descriptive study was undertaken on a sample of 4904 adult participants. For the data treatment basic statistics was complemented with tree classification analysis, using CRT algorithm. This study allowed concluding that in the sample at study the frequency with which the participants ate out of home was in general low, corresponding to four or less times per week for 71.9% of the participants, and the consumption of fast food meals was also acceptable, i.e., with a low frequency of up to two times per week in 88.6% of the respondents. The biggest differences were encountered when comparing participants form different age groups, countries or sexes, and not so much for living environment or education level. Tree classification analysis highlighted the relative importance of the considered factors for eating out and fast food meals, being country and age confirmed as the most influential factors. In the evaluated sample the incidence of eating out and fast food meals was low, which is a good indicator to globally contribute for a good health status of the participants involved in the study.