Food and drink consumption at 16 years
Consumption frequencies of food and non-alcoholic and
alcoholic beverages were elicited using a postal questionnaire
sent to all traced adolescents at the 16-year followup.
Adolescents were asked to consider their food and
non-alcoholic beverage consumption during the previous
six months and to select a response alternative on a sixpoint
scale ranging from ‘never or less often than once a
month’ to ‘once a day or more often”. The frequency of
alcohol consumption was measured on a six-point scale
ranging from ‘I have never drunk’ to ‘I use alcohol once
a week or more often’. Based on previous findings on
stress-related food and drink preferences among adults
and adolescents, we chose snack-type fatty, salty and sweet
foods and sugary, sugar-free and alcoholic beverages for
the analyses [2,6,8,29,30]. Frequent intake of sausages/
frankfurters was defined as twice a week or more often,
for other foods and non-alcoholic beverages frequent
consumption was defined as 3–5 times a week or more
often. Alcohol intake was classified as ‘never’, ‘randomly’
and ‘once a month or more often’.