Selected aspects of dietary habits and physical activity of students at the Biotechnical faculty, Slovenia

Abstract The aim of this study was to determine the influence of joining university on dietary habits, intake of food, and physical activity of students at the Biotechnical Faculty of the University of Ljubljana. Overall, 226 students (82.3% female) self-evaluated their dietary habits and their physical activity before and after starting university. A change in dietary habits was evident for the majority of the students (female: 74.7%; male: 67.5%). After starting their studies, ~20% of students consumed less fruits and vegetables, and only 28.8% and 15.5% of the students consumed fresh fruit and fresh vegetables, respectively, more than once a day. Female students were more likely to prepare home-cooked meals (almost 50%; at least 4 times a week), while male students were more likely to eat in restaurants with subsidised meals. Approximately 70% of the students reported negative changes in their motor skills after starting university and of these, 90% also reported negative change in their dietary habits, as evidenced by higher consumption of savoury snacks and lower consumption of fresh vegetables. Since our results show a negative influence of joining university on dietary habits and physical activity, more attention needs to be paid to the critical factors involved.

the students (female: 74.7%; male: 67.5%).After starting their studies, ~20% of students consumed less fruits and vegetables, and only 28.8% and 15.5% of the students consumed fresh fruit and fresh vegetables, respectively, more than once a day.Female students were more likely to prepare home-cooked meals (almost 50%; at least 4 times a week), while male students were more likely to eat in restaurants with subsidised meals.Approximately 70% of the students reported negative changes in their motor skills after starting university and of these, 90% also reported negative change in their dietary habits, as evidenced by higher consumption of savoury snacks and lower consumption of fresh vegetables.Since our results show a negative influence of joining university on dietary habits and physical activity, more attention needs to be paid to the critical factors involved.

Introduction
Some studies have reported changes in lifestyle of young adults undergoing the transition from secondary school education to a degree course at university.Many will have moved away from their homes to take up their university places, and for the first time they have to assume the responsibility for food purchasing and preparation, which is also the reason for changes the nutritional habits that they obtained in childhood.Also differences in dietary habits can be seen between female and male students (Alkazemi, 2019;El Ansari et al., 2012;Hilger et al., 2017).Although students generally recognise the importance of a healthy diet, they often do not have sufficient knowledge or an accurate perception regarding dietary recommendations.According to the Slovenian Resolution on the National Programme on Nutrition and Physical Activity for Health 2015-2025 ("Slovenian Resolution"), more attention should be paid to raising students' awareness of healthy eating habits and promoting skills for independent preparation of balanced meals, with special emphasis on male students (RS, 2015).
The socioeconomic status of students and the cost of food can also influence the food choice (Kelly et al., 2013;Sogari et al., 2018), and is one of the main reasons that these young adults entering a degree course at university in Slovenia receive subsidised meals (RS, 2014).Recently, the Slovenian government has been paying a lot of attention to the quality of subsidised meals for students, which is also one of the specific goals of the "Slovenian Resolution".Furthermore, students start to plan their own diet, which in this university setting is usually easier to prepare, easier to access, more convenient (e.g., fast food, canteen, home delivery) and more affordable.Stressful situations during university life can also affect food choices, such as the tendency to consume more unhealthy snacks that are high in calories, fat and salt (Alzahrani et al., 2020;Matthews et al., 2016).Many other factors can also influence students' food choices, including the appeal of food through product placement, novelty food items, as well as family and friends.Young adults are also more inclined to using social media, where numerous nutritional information can be found (Howse et al., 2018;Kelly et al., 2013;Klassen et al., 2018;Sogari et al., 2018).Many of these influences do not lead to healthy food options, which may on long term have negative impact on health, especially on the incidences of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs).Noncommunicable diseases are responsible for more than 70 % of deaths in Slovenia, which is similar to the number of deaths worldwide (Powell et al., 2019;RS, 2015;WHO, 2018).The risk for NCDs can be diminished with proper nutrition and sufficient physical activity.One of the goals of wisely balanced diet for (young) adults is to eat at least 450 to 650 grams of fruit and vegetables per day (RS, 2015).The last national survey showed that on average adults consume 192 grams of fruit and 132 grams of vegetables per day.To meet the goal the average daily intake of fruit and vegetables should be more than doubled.Similar situation can be seen for consumption of fish, where adults in average consume only 119 grams of fish per week, compared to the recommended 300 grams per week.On the other hand, the adult's weekly consumption of meat (885 grams) and meat products (441 grams) is significantly higher than the recommended 300 grams of red meat or meat products per week (Gregorič et al., 2019).
Skipping breakfast is another problem among adolescents and adults in Slovenia.Some studies show that skipping breakfast may be related to sedentary behaviour and can result in increased risk of overweight and obesity as well as developing NCDs (Longo-Silva et al., 2022;Ma et al., 2020;Suhett et al., 2022).Students also have to change how they organise and spend their leisure time, which is usually reduced, mainly due to new study obligations.Consequently, students may reduce their physical activity and increase the time they spend in a sitting position.This can negatively impact their mental health, their interpersonal relationships and their emotional status (Ren et al., 2021).Time spent on physical activity is further reduced in the later years of study (Downes, 2015;Small et al., 2012).Therefore, it is important to increase the number of physically active students, as this is also one of the specific goals of the "Slovenian Resolution".The students should not be physically active only during mandatory physical activities organised at the university, but extracurricular sporting activities should also be encouraged (RS, 2015).
Therefore, transition from secondary school to university is a very important period for the promotion of health, especially for healthy eating behaviour and physical activity.In this period, the students will develop and establish a number of health behaviour (Matthews et al., 2016;Poobalan et al., 2014) that can have long-term impact on the health of these individuals (El Ansari et al., 2012).
In the present study we aimed to determine the dietary habits and physical activity of students at the Biotechnical Faculty of the University of Ljubljana, to determine related differences between the sexes and to assess the influence of the transition to student life, including the frequency of meals and the way they are prepared.We hypothesized that the transition from secondary school to university life would change students' eating habits and physical activity.We assumed that some changes were for the better and some for the worse, and that the changes were not the same for all students.To the best of our knowledge, there have been few surveys that have studied food intake, dietary habits, frequency of meals and methods of preparing food along with the level of physical activity of students before and after they started their university degree course.To properly address this issue, it is important to determine dietary habits of students and prepare appropriate intervention programmes in terms of nutritional and physical activity counselling (Kelly et al., 2013;Plotnikoff et al., 2015;Sogari et al., 2018).

Research question
The research questions were formulated through the aims and research objectives presented in the "Introduction" section.
(1) Did joining university affect the dietary habits of students of the Biotechnical Faculty of the University of Ljubljana?
(2) Did joining university influence physical activity of students at the Biotechnical Faculty of the University of Ljubljana?

Design of the study
The case control study was conducted at the Biotechnical Faculty of the University of Ljubljana, and it included students from different Departments: Agronomy, Biology, Animal Sciences, Food Science and Technology, and Landscape Architecture.Students taking part in different study programmes were included, including both Bachelor and Masters degrees.The university students were recruited via mailing lists, social networks, and advertising of the study during classes and lectures.
Initially, 385 students were enrolled in the study, but only 226 of them submitted fully completed questionnaires to be included in the study.The results of the study are based exclusively on questionnaires that were completed in full by the students from Biotechnical faculty.In the first part of the study, conducted from April to July 2016, only 85 valid responses were received.To obtain more data another round was carried out from November 2016 to January 2017, resulting in another 141 valid responses.The questionnaire was available online and the enrolment was voluntary.Due to the use of an online survey as a non-interventional method, no ethics committee approval was required.Since the data were self-reported, the responses may have been influenced by social desirability.

Questionnaire
Dietary habits and physical activity practices were assessed using a behavioural questionnaire divided into three sections.Data were self-reported and only quantitative questions were included due to the length of the questionnaire.With long questionnaires there is a risk that participants will not engage sufficiently, resulting in fewer questionnaires being completed (Braun et al., 2021).
The first section consisted of questions regarding nutrition, and was adopted from previous studies (Tomšič et al., 2014).To determine the change in consumption before and after starting their university degree course, the students were asked to detail their frequency of consumption of 25 specific food groups (for example, food group "milk, dairy products" consisted of milk, yoghurt, cheese and other dairy products).They also evaluated their dietary habits and whether these had changed since they started university.This section on nutrition also included questions about the frequency of meal consumption, and whether their meals were prepared at home or consumed in the student cafeteria or in restaurants with subsidised meals.Section 2 consisted of questions regarding their physical activity, and whether a high school sports educator had any influence on their sports involvement.This section also asked whether students noted a change in their motor skills after starting their university degree course, as well as what means of transportation they used to get to the Faculty.The last section was dedicated to socio-demographic questions and questions about their weight and height; these data were used to calculate the body mass index (BMI) of the participants in the study.

Statistical analysis
The data from the evaluation of the questionnaires were analysed using the R Commander software, version 2.6-2.The χ 2 test, or Fisher's exact test for count data when the cell count was < 5, was used to determine overall differences between student scores and characteristics and to identify significant variables.A p-value <0.05 was considered statistically significant.

Socio-demographic characteristics
Previous studies have been carried out to determine dietary information of different population groups, including for food consumption and dietary habits, along with physical activity.One such study was SI.Menu (Gregorič et al., 2019).These studies can provide relevant and useful information on the nutritional status of a population, and thus help to develop and implement intervention programmes (Zaletel-Kragelj et al., 2006).The present study focused on the students the Biotechnical Faculty who were enrolled in different study programmes.
A total of 226 students completed the self-reported questionnaire, among whom the majority were female, with mean age of 21.3 years (Table 1).Similarly, other studies also report that women predominately responded to such studies (El Ansari et al., 2015).It should however be noted that female students represent a large proportion (~65%) of all students of the Biotechnical Faculty of  the University of Ljubljana, which contributes to this discrepancy between the sexes of the respondents.Students generally came from the central Slovenia region.About half of the students had changed their region of residency with the start of their studies and among those, 82.5% claimed that their dietary habits had changed, while only 64.3% of the students who had not changed their region of residence claimed that (p < 0.05).The responses of students not living at home show that about 30% of them lived in an apartment, either with other roommates or alone (Table 1).Among those whose dietary habits have changed, 62.0% have moved away from home, while the majority (58.3%) of those who stated that their dietary habits have not changed since the start of the studies still live at home (p < 0.05).Previous studies show that parents as well as peer pressure, where students are influenced by the choices of their friends, can have an important role in determination of the dietary habits, and it can be either positive or negative (Sogari et al., 2018).
Among the factors that influence the food choices of students is the cost of the food.Students and young adults find healthy food options less affordable (Howse et al., 2018;Kelly et al., 2013;Sogari et al., 2018).When asked about their financial status, the greatest majority of both female and male students responded that they managed financially if they spend their money wisely (Table 1), with more than half of the students reporting that they had to be careful with their finances to get by.When it comes to dietary habits, socio-economic status also has an important role later in life, as a study on Polish adults has shown (Zujko et al., 2020).Adults with higher socioeconomic status appeared to have better dietary habits, and this was also seen for Europeans in terms of their consumption of fruit and vegetables (De Irala-Estévez et al., 2000).

Dietary habits
As shown in Table 2, around half of the students self-evaluated their dietary habits as average, meaning neither very good, nor very poor.When asked whether their dietary habits had changed since the start of their studies, the majority stated "yes".Among the students whose dietary habits had changed, just over half reported that the change was for the worse, and among those, the majority (67.0%) evaluated their dietary habits as average.Of those students whose dietary habits had changed for the better since the start of their studies, 57.7% evaluated their dietary habits as * p < 0.05, females versus males (χ 2 analysis).good.Majority (84.4%) of the students whose dietary habits have improved since the start of the study also reported that their motor skills have improved.The majority (55.6%) of students whose motor skills have changed for the better evaluated their dietary habits as good (p < 0.05).
Responses related to the consumption of their meals indicated significant differences between the female and male students (p = 0.024) (Table 2).In general, the female students indicated that they ate 4 meals/day.Also, relatively high proportions of the female students reported that they ate either 3 or 5 meals/day.On the other hand, the male students generally reported 3 or 4 meals/ day.Among the students whose dietary habits had improved since the start of their studies, 38.5% and 28.2% reported eating 4 or 5 meals/day, respectively, while 37.5% of the students whose dietary habits had worsened reported eating only 3 meals/day (p < 0.05).
For meal preparation, the students generally cooked for themselves, with significant differences between the sexes (p < 0.05) (Table 2).A higher proportion was seen for the female students, where almost 50% cooked their own meals at least four times a week.Male students tended to cook less frequently, which appears to be balanced by the higher proportion of the male students who indicated that they ate in the student cafeteria or where subsidised meals were provided.With regard to quality of the meals, the meaning of this data depends on the quality of the meals provided.If the meals are balanced and well structured, eating in the student cafeteria can improve dietary habits, as was reported in a study in France (Guagliardo et al., 2011).On the other hand, frequent eating at the student restaurant can result in higher BMIs and increased fat %, as shown by a Belgian study (Deliens et al., 2013).The results also showed that students who reported improvement in their motor skills tended to cook their meals at home more often than students whose motor skills changed for the worse since the start of their studies (p < 0.05).Young adults often lack the basic skills for food preparation; and some of them report a negative change in dietary habits after moving away from home (Sogari et al., 2018).However, those who have food preparation skills also have better diet quality (Larson et al., 2006).
Data on meal consumption frequency are presented in Figure 1, with significant differences between females and males related to breakfast, morning snack, afternoon snack and dinner (p < 0.05).Female students were more consistent when it came to eating morning snack, while for the male students this was seen for their afternoon snack.The proportions of respondents who generally had lunch every day was similar across the sexes (~85%).On the other hand, more male students ate dinner every day, while more female students ate breakfast every day.Data on the importance of breakfast are divided.Additionally, the problem with such studies lies with the definition of what breakfast is, and what kind of food constitutes a healthy or quality option (O'Neil et al., 2014).On the one hand, a meta-analysis using studies conducted on adults from the USA and Asia showed that those who skip breakfast are more at the risk of developing type 2 diabetes (Ballon et al., 2019).Also, further meta-analyses showed that skipping breakfast is associated with the risk of becoming overweight or obese, as well as with increased risk of developing cardiovascular disease later in life and of increased all-cause mortality (Chen et al., 2020;Ma et al., 2020).On the other hand, a study on adolescents in Spain showed benefits both ways.Those who skipped breakfast and those who consumed a better quality breakfast (e.g., bread, cereals and/or dairy products) were both reported to have better health-related quality of life; these people also perceived themselves as less stressed than those who consumed a poor quality breakfast (e.g., commercially baked foods) (Ferrer-Cascales et al., 2018).In connection with this, the habit of breakfast eating should be encouraged among students, although a study on national nutritional habits in Slovenia recently reported improvements among adolescents (Gregorič et al., 2019).

Food consumption frequency
The data related to the frequency of consumption of each of the specified food items before and after starting university are presented in Figure 2, as the combined data for all of the students together (i.e., female plus male).Differences between female and male students as well as other comparisons are discussed below.
When it comes to data on the consumption of fresh fruit and vegetables, only a small proportion of students ate fresh fruit and vegetables frequently (daily, more than once).The female students in the present study were more diligent and consumed fresh fruit and vegetables more frequently than the male students (p < 0.05), which is consistent with national research on nutritional habits (Gregorič et al., 2019).Similar data have been reported for Hungarian and American students, where again, female students consumed more fruit and vegetables than male students (Breitenbach et al., 2016;Yahia et al., 2016).In the present study, students whose dietary habits had improved, reported eating more fresh fruit and vegetables, compared to the students whose dietary habits changed for the worse since the start of the study.Also, around 20% of all of the students reported that they consumed more fresh fruit and vegetables while they were in high school.Interestingly, Baskova et al. (2014) showed that school children consumed less fruit and vegetables as they got older, with the same tendency for girls to eat more fruit and vegetables than boys (Baskova et al., 2014).Decline in fruit and vegetable consumption has also been seen for university students when it was monitored across the time they spent at university (Small et al., 2012).
Differences between female and male students were also seen for red meat consumption (p < 0.05).In general, male students reported eating red meat more frequently than the female students, and 85.0% of male students reported that their consumption of red meat had not changed since their start of university; this was the case for only 61.3% of female students.Another food group of concern was fish and other seafood.The results show that regardless of self-evaluated change in dietary habits or whether the change was for the better or worse, the greatest majority of students reported eating fish and other seafood 1 to 3 days/month.Similar results were reported for university students in Finland, where meat was consumed more frequently than fish (El Ansari et al., 2015).
Consumption of pulses among students was also concerning, as the greatest majority of students generally consumed pulses 1 day/week.Comparing the dietary habits from before university, it can be seen that these did not change for 68.6% of all of the students.Students whose dietary habits have improved tend to eat pulses more frequently than students whose dietary habits have worsened since the start of the study (p < 0.05).
Generally, students consume sweets more frequently than savory snacks.Namely, the greatest majority of all of the students consumed savory snacks at university on 1 to 3 days/month, while the greatest majority of all of the students consumed sweet snacks 2 to 4 days/week.A little over 20% of all students reported consuming savoury and sweet snacks more frequently than before the start of their studies.We can also find that students whose dietary habits have improved are less likely to consume savoury and sweet snacks than students whose dietary habits have not improved (p < 0.05).Generally, snacking is considered an unhealthy dietary habit.The transition to university can be stressful for students, plus they sometimes do not have enough time for meal preparation, and therefore tend to consume more snacks (Sogari et al., 2018).Savory or salty snacks consumption can pose a problem, not only because it can lead to a higher salt consumption, but also because of the higher energy intake (Moosavian et al., 2017).A study on high school and faculty students in Serbia showed that salty snacks can represent an important source of salt, but also that it can be easily managed and modified.Interestingly, the study found no correlation between salty snack consumption and higher BMI.The authors suggest that this may be due to increased energy requirements due to growth and development needs and to their regular diet that does not meet these requirements (Timic et al., 2020).
When it comes to the fried food consumption, male students consumed fried foods more frequently than female students (p < 0.05), which is consistent with results from other studies (Driskell et al., 2006).When comparing their consumption at university with that before the start of their studies, these dietary habits remained the same for the greatest majority of all of the students, with 18.1% consuming more fried foods at university, and 19.5% consuming less.Also, when comparing students whose dietary habits have changed for the worse, the results indicate that they are generally more likely to eat fried foods than those students whose eating habits have improved.(p < 0.05).Fried food is often less expensive, which can represent an important factor for students.Among other factors, food preparation skills, as well as family and friends, can have a great influence when it comes to fried food consumption.Students who lack food preparation skills could consume more fried foods.Parents can sometimes represent a negative example, and therefore students could consume more fried foods.On the other hand, it can also possible that students who had a healthy diet at home may choose to eat more fried food when left to manage their own nutrition (Driskell et al., 2006;Sogari et al., 2018).

Physical activity
Table 3 indicates the student responses regarding their physical activity.During their university studies, the greatest majority of the female students attended mandatory physical activity at the University together with other extracurricular individual forms of physical activity, while the greatest majority of the male students were enrolled in other extracurricular individual forms of physical activity (p < 0.05).When asked if they noted a change in their motor skills since their start of university, more female than male students responded "yes" (p < 0.05).Among those who noted a change in their motor skills, the majority claimed the change was for the worse.Among the students whose motor skills changed for the worse, 90% also reported a negative change in their dietary habits since the start of the studies (p < 0.05), namely a higher consumption of savoury snacks (p < 0.05) and a lower consumption of fresh vegetables (p < 0.05).For the student BMI, these data indicate a statistically significant difference between the female and male students (p < 0.05).For the BMI values calculated, the majority of the respondent in the present study were in the normal BMI range (18.5-24.9kg/m 2 ); however, more male students than female students were categorised as either overweight (25.0-29.9kg/m 2 ) or obese (>30.0 kg/m 2 ).Similar data were obtained in a study in Hungary, where the majority of students also had normal BMI, although > 20% were classified as either overweight or obese (Breitenbach et al., 2016).Again, more male students than female students were overweight.Students often gain weight during their first year of university studies (Deliens et al., 2013), and it has been shown that this trend continues throughout the university study years (Deliens et al., 2019).
The results also indicated a significant difference between female and male students regarding their means of transportation to the Faculty (p < 0.05).Almost half of the male students used a car, while almost half of the female students used a bus to get to the Faculty.Students who changed the region of residency generally walk (35.1%) or use the bus (39.5%), while those who did not change the region of their residence mainly use the car (46.4%) to get to the Faculty (p < 0.05).As for the change in dietary habits, we can also find statistically significant differences (p < 0.05).The greatest majority of students who indicated that their dietary habits have changed usually use the bus (44.6%) or the car (25.3%) to get to the Faculty.More attention should be put on encouraging active transport solutions for the students (e.g., walking, cycling), which can be both time-and material-friendly solution, as is also stated in the "Slovenian Resolution" (RS, 2015).According to the results of the present study, such active transport was not particularly popular among these students; most of them used either buses or cars to get to the Faculty, instead of walking or cycling.A similar situation was seen for young adults in Belgium, who also preferred driving by car over walking (De Vos & Alemi, 2020).
The students in the present study reported indications of reduction of their motor skills after starting their university studies.At the Biotechnical Faculty in Ljubljana, sports education is a mandatory extracurricular activity that is carried out as exercises over 60 h in the first year, and compliance is a condition for students to progress to the third year.Students carrying out Masters degree studies can also be included in a free programme of sports activities.In this way, the students indeed have the possibility for more frequent physical activity, regardless of their social-demographic status.
This study has some limitations, one of them is that it primarily reached those students who were open and interested in nutrition and physical activity issues from the outset.As the data were provided by self-assessment, a bias in the reporting cannot be excluded (selective memory).When preparing the questionnaire, care was taken to ensure that it was easy and quick to complete, but this meant that the picture of the students' nutritional habits and physical activity was not as detailed.As this study was conducted on students from the Biotechnical Faculty, University of Ljubljana, we would propose that further studies on this subject include other faculties and universities in Slovenia.The findings of this study will add to the somewhat limited knowledge regarding this subject, and would allow for creation of new national health promotion programmes for the university environment, which could help to provide long-term beneficial impact on the health of the young population as well as reducing health care costs on long term.

Conclusions
The results of our study indicate a negative change in dietary habits of students after joining the university.When comparing dietary habits from before, the majority of students reported a negative change and generally consumed less fruit and vegetables than those students whose self-reported dietary habits changed for the better.The results also show that female students cooked their own meals, skipped breakfast less frequently and consumed less meat than male students.The results also indicate that most students consume sweet snacks more frequently than savoury snacks.Regarding physical activity, the results indicate that a majority of students reported a negative change in motor skills after the start of the studies, and also that active transport was not the preferred option for the majority of students.

Figure
Figure 1.Relative proportions of female and male students for their reported frequencies of breakfast, morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack, dinner and occasional snack consumption.

Figure
Figure 2. Relative proportions of students for their reported consumption of different foods and food groups, as evaluated after the start of their studies (a), and compared to before the start of their studies (b).

Changed place of residence at the start of studies
a, mean ±SD