Fresh for Freshmen: Correlating Student Produce Consumption and Related Factors to Skin Carotenoid Scores Assessed Via Veggie Meter
While it is true that college students in the United States are often dismissed as “unhealthy” eaters–who subsist solely on fast food and convenience meals–and that adequate fruit and vegetable (F/V) intake is a critical contributor to the prevention of numerous chronic diseases, F/V intake among college student populations is a vastly underdeveloped area of dietary research and intervention. In order to expand the body of research exploring factors related to students’ F/V intake and overall dietary quality, this study aimed to identify the relationships between skin carotenoid levels–a measure of plant-synthesized pigments in the skin which reflect the extent of one’s F/V intake–and students’ self-reporting of individual food frequency, university dining hall usage, dietary self-efficacy, and physical and mental well-being. Thirty first-year students, all of whom utilize an unlimited University of Minnesota dining plan, each completed a 23-question survey which inquired about demographic factors; the frequencies with which they consume fruits, vegetables, and components of other food groups; their confidence in their abilities to consume fruits and vegetables every day; and their perceptions of their own physical health and mental well-being. After completing the survey, each volunteer participated in a skin carotenoid reading via Veggie Meter®, a non-invasive tool that measures skin carotenoid levels using pressure-mediated reflection spectroscopy. This study was designed to test the hypothesis that students whose survey results demonstrate higher F/V intake and dietary self-efficacy display higher carotenoid scores as well as more favorable self-assessments of mental and physical health and well-being. This exploratory study lays the groundwork for future, larger-scale studies by demonstrating, preliminarily, that increasing students’ access to fresh fruits and vegetables has the potential to impact more than just physical health, improving students’ confidence in their abilities to fuel their bodies and contributing to favorable mental health outcomes.