Communication with Parents Improves Students' Diet and Physical Activity

A new finding produced by researchers at Penn State suggests that students eat more fruits and vegetables and exercise more on days they communicate more with their parents.

"Only a third of college students consume a diet that is consistent with national recommendations," said Meg Small, research associate in the Prevention Research Center for the Promotion of Human Development in a press statement. "In addition, college students' physical activity levels decline from the first semester to their seventh semester. Our research suggests that parents may play an important role in influencing their adolescents to establish behavioural patterns that improve their long-term health and chronic-disease risk."

Researchers conducted a study on 746 first-year students from a university in the U.S., to examine the effect of parent-college student communication on the students' eating and physical activity behavior. Participants were asked to complete a baseline survey, including 14 daily surveys. The survey had questions regarding the time the students spent talking to, emailing or texting their parents.  Apart from this, the survey included questions about the frequency and duration students worked out or played sports, and the number of times they consumed fruits and vegetables.

The researchers noticed that when students communicated with their parents for 30 minutes, they were 14 percent more likely to have fruits and vegetables, and 50 percent more likely to engage in 30 minutes of physical activity.

The study did not focus on the content of conversation between the parent and student; hence it is unclear why conversation with parents had a positive effect on student's behavior.

The researchers predict that most often, communication with parents has a direct as well as an indirect effect on college students. This may be because parents directly remind their children to consume a variety of healthy food and involve in physical activity. Or conversely, it could be indirectly, where students are reminded about the fact that someone cares about their health and well-being, and will thus be motivated to take better care of themselves.

The study was published in the journal Adolescent Health.