The transition from school to university is associated with social, structural, and behavioral changes. These changes may be related to feelings of loneliness, which are in turn related to morbidity. The authors’ aim was to quantify loneliness among students and to identify its determinants and its relation to transition-related variables (e.g., changes in weight, diet, or physical activity since the transition from high school to university). Coming from across Germany, 689 students participated in the Nutrition and Physical Activity in Adolescence (NuPhA) survey (16–29 years; 69.5% female). Associations of loneliness with the above-mentioned aspects were analyzed using descriptive statistics and linear regressions. Altogether, 32.4% felt moderately lonely and 3.2%, severely lonely. Emotional loneliness was more common than social loneliness (severe loneliness: 7.7% vs. 3.2%). Both were positively associated with feelings of depression and anxiety. Being married or in a committed relationship seemed to be protective factors for emotional loneliness. Physical inactivity, an immigrant background, and studying social sciences were related to higher social loneliness. Transition-related variables produced mixed results. In conclusion, this study’s findings indicated that loneliness seemed to be prevalent in university students. The authors identified important starting points for interventions to prevent loneliness. Such interventions may help reduce the disease burden in the students’ future professional life.

Healthy eating can prevent individuals across all age groups from developing overweight/obesity and non-communicable diseases such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. However, unhealthy eating habits (e.g., a high level of fast food consumption) have been found to be widespread among university students. Thus, it seems necessary to develop prevention strategies to improve students’ eating habits. However, to ensure that such strategies are successful, it is important that they fit the needs of the target population. By conducting qualitative interviews with students (n = 20), we aimed to get a deeper understanding of barriers to healthy eating. Students were asked about barriers to healthy eating and to suggest possible ideas that could improve their eating behavior in the future. Our findings revealed that students are especially affected by time-related barriers (e.g., a lack of time due to university commitment) and environmental barriers (e.g., a lack of cheap, tasty, and healthy meal options at the university canteen). Time-related barriers were also related to motivational barriers (e.g., being too lazy to cook after a busy day at university). In addition, knowledge/information-related barriers, social-support-related barriers, and transition-related barriers emerged from our interviews. The variety of barriers addressed and the different views on some of these, indicate that various strategies seem to be needed to improve the eating behavior among university students and to prevent them from gaining weight and developing non-communicable diseases in the future.

The transition from school to university has been found to be associated with a decline in physical activity (PA). As regular engagement in PA plays an important role in preventing obesity and various chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases, a deeper understanding on barriers that hinder university students from being physically active is necessary. We therefore conducted a mixed-methods study which built, first, on conducting a quantitative online survey across Germany (n = 689; 69.5% female) to examine barriers among university students. Afterwards, we explored these barriers in more detail by conducting 20 in-depth qualitative interviews (65.0% female). While we identified in our quantitative survey that especially time-related and motivational barriers hindered university students to engage in PA, our qualitative interviews indicate that connections between these barriers seem to exist. Moreover, the qualitative interviews enabled us to identify additional transition-related barriers (e.g., missing routines in everyday life, difficulties in finding a new sports club) that were not included in the quantitative questionnaire. Thus, such barriers should be incorporated into quantitative instruments to assess these barriers in larger samples of university students in the future. Moreover, our findings provide potential starting points for promoting PA in German university settings.

Zusammenfassung: Ziel der Studie Studierende sind in den letzten Jahren immer mehr in den Fokus von Prävention und gesundheitswissenschaftlicher Forschung gerückt. Allerdings werden sie meist als homogene Gruppe wahrgenommen. Ziel des vorliegenden Beitrags war es, zu prüfen, ob in der Gruppe Studierender gesundheitliche Ungleichheit existiert. Methodik Zur Beantwortung der Frage wurde ein bundesweiter Studierendensurvey, die sogenannte NuPhA-Studie, herangezogen (n=689, 69,5% weiblich, Altersdurchschnitt: 22,69 Jahre). Ergebnisse und Schlussfolgerung Tatsächlich zeigten sich Zusammenhänge zwischen sozioökonomischen Indikatoren und Gesundheit sowie Gesundheitsverhalten. Beispielsweise war die Studienfinanzierung über ein Stipendium mit einer besseren allgemeinen, psychischen und physischen Gesundheit verbunden. Insbesondere der subjektive Sozialstatus war positiv mit einer besseren allgemeinen, psychischen und körperlichen Gesundheit sowie einer höheren Sportaktivität verknüpft. Die Ergebnisse sprechen für ein Vorliegen von gesundheitlicher Ungleichheit in der zunächst homogen erscheinenden Gruppe Studierender. Dies unterstreicht die Notwendigkeit einer differenzierten Betrachtung der Gruppe Studierender und die Wichtigkeit, gesundheitliche Ungleichheit unter Studierenden tiefergehend zu untersuchen, zu erklären und schließlich zu reduzieren.

The obesity prevalence in children and adolescents has increased worldwide during the past 30 years. Although diet has been identified as one risk factor for developing obesity in this age group, the role of specific dietary factors is still unclear. One way to gain insight into the role of these factors might be to detect biomarkers that reflect metabolic health and to identify the associations between dietary factors and these biomarkers. This would enable nutrition-related metabolic changes to be detected early in life, which might be a promising strategy to prevent childhood obesity. However, existing literature offers only inconclusive evidence for diet and some of these obesity-related biomarkers (e.g., blood lipids). We thus conducted a systematic literature review to further examine eligible studies that investigate associations between dietary factors and 12 obesity-related biomarkers in healthy children and adolescents aged 3-18 years. We searched the scientific databases PubMed/Medline and Web of Science Core Collection for potentially eligible articles. Our final literature search resulted in 2727 hits. After the selection process, we included 81 articles that reported on 1111 single observations on dietary factors and any of the obesity-related biomarkers. Around 81% of the total observations showed nonsignificant results. For many biomarkers we did not find enough observations to draw clear conclusions on possible associations between a dietary factor and the respective biomarker. In cases where we identified enough observations, the results were contradictory. Since these nonsignificant and inconclusive findings may impede the development of effective strategies against childhood obesity, this article takes a closer look at possible reasons for such findings. In addition, it provides action points for future research efforts. In conclusion, current evidence on associations between dietary factors and obesity-related biomarkers is inconclusive. We thus provided an overview on which specific limitations may impede current research. Such knowledge is necessary to enable future research efforts to better elucidate the role of diet in the early stages of obesity development.