Frequency of Vegetables, Fruits, Snacks, and Sugar-sweetened Beverage Consumption Among Vulnerable Children and Adolescents—Empirical Evidence Using the Taiwan Fund for Children and Families Survey

• Main Authors: Chia-Hsin Lu, 呂佳馨
• Other Authors: 張宏浩
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2017
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/uxbbg6

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 農業經濟學研究所 === 105 === In the recent decades, people’ lifestyle and dietary habits have changed gradually. If people keep having unbalanced nutrition food, they will tend to have some chronic diseases. Many researches indicated that having vegetables and fruits is good for health, while overeating snacks and sugar-sweetened beverage will cause damage to our body. It is very important to cultivate correct dietary habits and absorb enough nutrients for children and adolescents during their puberty period. Although children can be taught the right concepts of diet from school, they still be deeply influenced by their family. According to the statistics of Taiwan’s Ministry of Health and Welfare, the number of low-income households is growing year by year. It implies that part of households may suffer from heavy burdens of daily expenses and affect the diet of their children negatively. To understand how families influence frequency of vegetables, fruits, snacks, and sugar-sweetened beverage consumption among vulnerable children and adolescents, this study involves empirical analysis using Ordered Probit Model on the third (2013) questionnaire of the Panel Study on Taiwan Database of Children and Youth in Poverty. The result showed that whether the family type was single-parent or not, parent’s education affected his or her children’ frequency of vegetables, fruits intakes positively in Taiwan’s vulnerable families. Besides, in parent families, frequency of vegetables, fruits intakes was relatively higher in northern Taiwan than other regions, while frequency of snacks and sugar-sweetened beverage consumption was higher in the middle of Taiwan. However, in single-parent families, children’ age negatively affected their frequency of vegetables, fruits intakes, while parent’s age positively affected. The result also showed that children’ frequency of vegetables, fruits intakes was decreasing along with the increase of their ages whether they were living in municipality or not, and parent’s education still affected their children’ frequency of vegetables, fruits intakes positively. In addition, living area (unit: ping) positively affected frequency of vegetables, fruits intakes in parent family in municipality, while living in non-municipality region, the lower the families’ income were, the much frequency of snacks and sugar-sweetened beverage children consumed.