Fast food consumption pattern
Results showed that the vast majority of the participants
(95.4%) eat restaurant fast food (Table 3). Fast food was
consumed once per week by 52.8% of adolescent girls and
60.9% of young adult girls. Moreover, 25.2% of adolescent
girls and 20.3% of young adult girls consumed fast
food twice or more weekly. In total, 79.1% of the sample
eats fast food at least once weekly. Beef or chicken
burgers were the main kinds of fast food meals usually
eaten by the sample subjects (70.4%), followed by pizza
(32.7%) and French fries (29.6%). A significantly higher
rate of young adult than adolescent girls reported eating
pizza usually (49.3% vs. 23.6%). On the other hand,
only 4.1% of the participants usually consume hotdog.
Regarding portion size, most of the participants usually
ordered either small (37.2%) or medium (44.9%) portion
sizes of fast food meals. However, the large portion size
was the choice for 17.9% of participants. Adolescent girls
who usually eat the large portion size of fast food had
significantly higher mean waist circumference (p0.006)
and mean hip circumference (p0.001) (Fig. 1). Interestingly,
carbonated soft drinks were the main beverages
usually consumed with fast food meals by both adolescent
and young adult girls (89 and 75.4%, respectively),
but other beverages such as coffee, tea, sweetened fruit
drinks, or energy drinks were rarely consumed with fast
food. Finally, weekends and evenings were the frequent
times when the participants often consumed fast food
meals.