Adolescent television viewing and unhealthy snack food consumption: the mediating role of home availability of unhealthy snack foods

Objective: To examine whether home availability of energy-dense snack foods mediates the association between television (TV) viewing and energy-dense snack consumption among adolescents. Design: Cross-sectional. Setting: Secondary schools in Victoria, Australia. Subjects: Adolescents (n 2984) from Years 7 and 9 of secondary school completed a web-based survey, between September 2004 and July 2005, assessing their energy-dense snack food consumption, school-day and weekend-day TV viewing and home availability of energy-dense snack foods. Results: School-day and weekend-day TV viewing were positively associated with energy-dense snack consumption among adolescent boys (beta = 0.003, P< 0.001) and girls (beta= 0.03, P< 0.001). Furthermore, TV viewing (school day and weekend day) were positively associated with home availability of energy-dense snack foods among adolescent boys and girls and home availability of energy-dense snack foods was positively associated with energy-dense snack food consumption among boys (beta= 0.26, P< 0.001) and girls (beta= 0.28, P< 0.001). Home availability partly mediated the association between TV viewing and energy-dense snack consumption. Conclusions: The results of the present study suggest that TV viewing has a significant role to play in adolescent unhealthy eating behaviours. Future research should assess the efficacy of methods to reduce adolescent energy-dense snack food consumption by targeting parents to reduce home availability of energy-dense foods and by reducing TV viewing behaviours of adolescents.