Supporting and empowering adolescents to adopt healthy and sustainable diets

For example, current consumption patterns contribute to environmental damage such as increased greenhouse-gas emissions, biodiversity loss, and water scarcity. At the same time, our dietary behaviours also contribute to lifestyle-related chronic diseases later in life, such as cardiovascular disease or type 2 diabetes. To favour population and planetary health, we therefore need to transition towards healthier and more sustainable diets. However, changing our dietary behaviour is not an easy process. Eating behaviours are thoroughly grounded in our daily habits and are influenced by various factors in our social and physical environment. Moreover, the basis of our dietary behaviour is strongly shaped in our childhood. Therefore, in my PhD project, I focus on how we can stimulate healthy and sustainable eating patterns from an early age.

Particularly, I focus on how to support healthy and sustainable diets among adolescents in the Netherlands, by means of the secondary school context. Although the early ages of life have already received much attention in nutrition research, secondary school aged-children have received less attention. In the SWITCH project, we therefore aim to fill this gap. In my PhD, which started in December 2020 and runs until 2025, I aim to understand:

1. The barriers and motivators (determinants) of healthy and sustainable dietary behaviours among adolescents, using a socio-ecological lens;

2. How concepts of health and sustainability are integrated in current school-based dietary interventions, and how those interventions are integrated in the broader school context (using the Whole School Approach as a lens);

3. On what determinants current dietary interventions in secondary schools are focused and what behaviour change techniques they use;

4. How adolescents perceive and make use of their own food environment, what factors determine their choices in this environment, and what changes they propose to facilitate healthy and sustainable diets within their age group.

These objectives lead me to gain insight into the perspectives of various stakeholders, including experts, practitioners, and adolescents themselves. I carry out this research together with an interdisciplinary team within the SWITCH project, consisting of 6 researchers working at Education and Learning Sciences and Consumption and Healthy Lifestyles.

Do you want to learn more about my PhD-project? In the video below, I explain my project and my daily activities as a researcher (in Dutch):

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