Journal of Clinical Nutrition & Dietetics

The importance of moving from the parental home for changing the nutrition behaviour of young adults in a gender perspective

World Congress on Nutrition and Dietetics
June 18-19, 2018 Paris, France

Sept A and Ihsen S

Technical University of Munich, Germany

ScientificTracks Abstracts: J Clin Nutr Diet

DOI: 10.4172/2472-1921-C1-002

Abstract

Young adults are faced with many challenges: in addition to finding the identity in the gender role and building up a system of moral, one's own future perspectives must also be developed. The essential thing is the replacement of the parents, which is often obtained by moving out of the parental home and is associated with many changes for the adolescents. Moving to their own home is a step in their life, which often causes changes in the personal nutrition. With the move from the parental home, the self-sufficiency is on and an own lifestyle and nutritional style has to be developed and there are new freedoms and opportunities to try out. Because the move is a big step for young adults, the focus is not on the nutrition. The main criteria, the nutrition has to comply with are fast, easy, delicious and cheap. The consumption of fast food, for example, is particularly attractive for young people, as it is a distinction from the adult culture of eating, which is characterized mainly by rules such as eating with cutlery. Although food has the same function for all ages, the different meanings between the nutrition habits of adolescents and adults become clear. In addition to achieving autonomy, personality development is also a developmental task in youth. This also includes the nutritional style, which is developed through the (un-) conscious examination of the eating patterns of adults. Within the framework of the research cluster enable – Healthy food choices in all stages of life, two focus groups with young women and men between the age of 18 and 25 and guided narrative interviews describe the personally perceived changes in nutrition behavior and provide information on the criteria that determine these changes. In this work, the focus is on gender-specific concepts and the practice of nutritional behavior in adolescence and young adulthood.

Biography

Alexandra Sept studied Elementary and Family Pedadogy, Adult Education and Sociology in the Bachelor’s. She has completed her Master’s degree in Educational Sciences mainly focussed on Elementary and Family Pedagogy at the University of Bamberg in Germany. Now she is working at the Technical University of Munich at the Professorship of Gender in Science and Engineering. There she is pursuing her PhD in the research cluster enable that develops new strategies to promote healthier food choices in all stages of life. The research project is interdisciplinary with the focus on the interface of food science and nutrition technology with information and communication technology as well as social studies. Current presentations and publications were at the GLOCER- Conference in Las Vegas (April 2018) and in the ACM-Journal.