Characteristics of global data on adolescents’ dietary intake

Despite data on adolescents’ dietary intake being essential to improve nutrition status, the availability of high-quality disaggregated data remains limited and with large global differences. These knowledge gaps hinder the assessment of adolescent diets and the development of evidence-based interventions to improve adolescent health and that of future generations. 

A systematic scoping review was conducted to investigate the availability, characteristics, and gaps in global adolescent dietary data. This included peer-reviewed and grey literature articles (from 2010 onwards) on the dietary intake of male and female adolescents aged 10–24 years. Studies from all countries and languages were included, incorporating any information related to types of food consumed, diet composition, dietary diversity, or meal patterns. Studies with insufficient methodological information, sample sizes less than 25, school-based data sets containing less than six schools, and studies that focused on pregnant or unhealthy study populations were excluded. Data, including year(s) of data collection, age, gender, sample size, dietary assessment methods, number of food items/groups, study design, location, and representativeness, were extracted. Of the 722 articles that were included, 677 (94%) were peer reviewed, representing 1,223 data sets, and 45 (6%) were grey literature, representing 98 data sets. Half of all data sets were from high-income countries. Most of the data was collected in cross-sectional surveys and over half of the data sets (57%) were from national representative surveys. 

The literature search revealed that there was no dietary data for adolescents in over one-third of countries globally. Most of these countries were in Sub-Saharan Africa. Furthermore, 14% of all countries (n=22) – primarily in Sub-Saharan Africa, and Europe and Central Asia – lacked nationally representative dietary data. The review identified a limited amount of detailed dietary information. In many countries, data on adolescent diets was available for fewer than seven food items/groups, which did not allow for quantification of intake. In the absence of a validated dietary diversity score for adolescents, assumptions were based on the Minimum Dietary Diversity score for children aged 6–23 months. Despite the existence of the validated Minimum Dietary Diversity for Women (ages 15–49 years, assessing 10 food groups), a seven-food group count was chosen as a threshold. This was assumed to provide a meaningful characterisation of adolescent dietary intake. A significant limitation of this review was that only peer-reviewed journals from one database (PubMed) were included.

The study highlights the critical significance of addressing adolescent nutrition, emphasising the pressing need for enhanced, accessible, and comprehensive data on adolescents' dietary intake to support effective nutritional interventions.