A healthier diet, more physical activity, less sedentary lifestyle and adequate sleep: implementing healthier lifestyles among young adults

Over the last decades, the impact of diet on health has been the subject of extensive research, and the conclusions are clear: a healthy diet – and more broadly, a healthy lifestyle – reduces the risk of non-communicable diseases (WHO, 2023). Despite this consensus, there is still room for improvement in Europeans’ eating habits. Daily consumption of fruit and vegetables remains insufficient.

This is particularly alarming among young adults aged between 18 and 34 years:

• They represent the population with the lowest fruit and vegetable intakes (Conner et al., 2017; Peltzer et al., 2014) ;
• Their levels of physical activity are insufficient. Studies show that more than 30% of them do not engage in any physical activity on a daily basis, even though they are particularly passionate about sport whether on television or on social networks (Nikitara et al., 2021).
• Sedentary behaviors are also high in this age group (Inpes, Baromètre santé nutrition 2008).
• Finally, scientific data point to a worrying increase in sleep deprivation among adults (Shochat T., 2012).

While a large proportion of young adults are not following public health recommendations on one or more dimensions, the summer edition of the Global Fruit & Veg Newsletter highlights the contribution of diet to a virtuous circle towards healthier lifestyles. This edition also examines the contribution of digital technologies in encouraging healthy lifestyles, especially among young adults.

The first article (Thapa et al., 2024) attempts to address this challenge. A Finnish survey of 5,043 adults aged ≥18 years assessed the association between sleep duration and fruit and vegetable consumption. According to this work, deviating from normal sleep duration (7-9h/d) is associated with a reduction in fruit and vegetable consumption. In fact, short sleepers (<7h/d) consumed 37g/day less fruit and vegetables and long sleepers (>9h) consumed 73g/day less than normal sleepers. This work invites the scientific community to incorporate all lifestyle components – sleep, sedentariness, activity and diet – into future interventions.

With the increased popularity of social media, including Instagram, and a growing amount of content promoting recipes as “healthy”, the second article (Del Pozo et al., 2024) analyses whether these contents comply with nutritional recommendations. The results suggest that recipes presented as #healthy may sometimes deviate from the recommendations and may, on the contrary, encourage unbalanced eating habits. Considering the influence of such content on dietary habits, this work illustrates both the need for content creators to upgrade their skills, and the leverage that social media could represent for public health interventions.

The third article (Singh et al., 2024) is a systematic review evaluating the effect of eHealth and mHealth interventions designed to improve physical activity, sedentary behaviour, healthy eating and sleep. The findings showed that e- and m-Health interventions resulted in improvements in steps/day, physical activity levels, sedentary behaviour, fruit and vegetable consumption and sleep quality. Improvements were also observed in energy intake and saturated fat consumption.

Scientific consensus seems to increasingly point to links between our behaviors in terms of diet, movement and sleep. To create a virtuous circle in this area, social media and digital tools – through their permanent presence in our daily lives – are interesting vectors for generating motivation and supporting behavioral change, especially among young adults.

Vicky Drapeau Kinesiology Professor

Université Laval, Québec