Abstract: Fruits and vegetables are important parts of healthy eating and they provide excellent sources of vitamins, minerals, and dietary fiber in our diet. According to the WHO, inadequate consumption of fruits and vegetables may contribute to as much as 14% of gastrointestinal cancer deaths and 11% of deaths resulted from ischemic heart disease worldwide. Higher risk of all-cause mortality is associated with insufficient fruits and vegetables consumption. Since 2011, Hong Kong has been promoting a 2 Plus 3 a day diet campaign aiming to raise the public's awareness on consuming a minimum of 2 portions of fruits and 3 portions of vegetables daily. Recent statistics showed that 81% of people aged 18 - 64 failed to meet this requirement. This finding suggested a strong demand to identify the underlying determinants that affect fruits and vegetables consumption behaviour that led to this result. This paper focuses on investigating these determinants among university students in Hong Kong. Surveys were conducted in 2015 with 600 participants randomly selected from universities across Hong Kong. The results indicated that 87% of students consuming fruits and vegetables regularly were due to the health benefits associated with fruits and vegetables, almost half of the students (47%) reported that taste of fruits and vegetables had led to their consumptions. Other factors such as gender, accessibility and parents' consumption behaviour were also found to play a role as determinants. Meanwhile, taste, cooking methods and texture of fruits and vegetables were found to play significant roles in preventing their consumptions.
Abstract: The study aims to investigate the current utilization of health information for disease prevention and health promotion among college students in Hong Kong, to understand how they acquire health information through different electronic media and to what extent they trust these health information. A cross-sectional study was performed between October and November 2015, 821 questionnaires were distributed to respondents in different tertiary institutions in Hong Kong, data were collected and analysed through SPSS programme. The findings showed that the respondents were mostly likely to look for health information when they were feeling sick (50.4%). Both male (63.5%) and female (64%) respondents reported that they lacked appropriate health knowledge and it was important for them to obtain this kind of information. A majority of respondents used internet (85.4%) and social media (67%) as their main sources of health information. There were also 60% of respondents who demonstrated doubts towards the reliability of information from the internet (23.3%) and social media (32.9%). There was no significant gender difference in terms of how this health information was acquired. These results showed that internet and social media were the principle sources of health information for college students in Hong Kong. However, most of them were unsure about the validity and trustworthiness of this information. To prevent students from obtaining potentially unreliable health information on the internet or from social media platforms, more health promotion is recommended to be carried out among local tertiary institutions on enhancing students' awareness in obtaining reliable health information.
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