Abstract Submission—CT Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics Spring Meeting 2024

Title: DIET, PHYSICAL ACTIVITY, AND ADIPOSITY EFFECTS ON SKIN CAROTENOID LEVEL IN
COLLEGE STUDENTS

Authors & Institutions: Scarlett Ball, Heather Phillips, Julia Gaiser, Stephanie Graffeo, Mackenzie Merriman,
Lisa Joyner, Sydney Hodges, Samuel Nunes, Valerie Duffy
University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut, USA

Category:  Research  Information Exchange – Project or Programs Report

Conflict of Interest:
 The authors wish to disclose conflict of interest (describe below)
________________________________________________________________________

 The authors do not have conflict of interest.

Human Subject Assurances: Check all that apply

 The research described in the abstract involved human subjects
 The research was conducted under ethical guidelines described above
 The authors had Institutional Board Review to conduct the research

Abstract (be sure to indicate funding source if applicable)

Introduction—College students' fruits and vegetables (F/V) intake falls short of recommendations, driven by
low liking, food access, and poorer health. Skin carotenoids provide a biomarker of F/V consumption to
compare against self-report and monitoring intervention responses.

Aim—To evaluate carotenoid levels in students recruited into a health promotion intervention.

Methods—Forty-eight college students met the inclusion criteria: consuming <5 F/V per day or achieving <150
minutes exercise/week. Participants reported F/V liking and frequency for assessing diet quality (DQ), intuitive
eating index (IE), physical activity (PA) exposure (frequency*duration*intensity), and food security (USDA
protocol). Measured were height/weight for BMI, %body fat (BF-bioelectrical impedance), and skin carotenoid
(VeggieMeter). Variables were checked for distribution for simple and multiple linear regression analysis.

Results—Carotenoid level was variable, reaching normal distribution with square root transformation. F/V
liking ranged from dislike to love; F/V intake from none to multiple times/day. DQ and IE scores showed
variability. Nearly half reported lower PA, 33 food insecure, and 17 overweight/obese. In bivariate associations,
significantly greater carotenoid levels associated with greater F/V liking, consumption, and PA. Although
higher DQ associated with greater carotenoid level, both DQ and IE was insignificant. Lower carotenoid status
associated with higher %BF and those reporting food insecurity. Multiple regression analysis explained 47.5%
of carotenoid status with unique contributions of lower %BF (b=-.34,p=.02), food security (b=.35,p=.02),
greater PA (b=.41,p=.006), and greater F/V liking (b=.43,p=.001).

Conclusions—Greater carotenoid status reflected f/v intake and food access, with greater PA and lower
adiposity in a sample of college students. The results showed that the food-like questionnaire was the most
effective measure of predicting carotenoid status (r= 0.313). Therefore, preference positively or negatively
impacts individual consumption of fruits and vegetables (Wanich et al., 2018). However, food insecurity was
the main barrier to fruit and vegetables in a sample of n=48 college students. 68.8% of participants reported
food insecurity, and 31.3% reported food security. Therefore, the study shows that it is essential to identify the
main barrier to fruit and vegetable consumption as it is critical for implementing nutrition education and
behavior change interventions. One limitation of this study was the small sample size; therefore, it may not
represent the broader population and thus not make it a generalizable research. Also, a small sample size may
not adequately describe the variability in the studied variables, making it difficult to detect true relationships or
correlations.

The food that I bought just didn't last and I didn't have money to get more.

I couldn't afford to eat balanced meals.

In the last 30 days, did you ever cut the size of your meals or skip meals because there wasn't
enough money for food and/or the dining hall was not an option?

In the last 30 days, were you ever hungry, but didn't eat because there wasn't enough money for food
and/or the dining hall was not an option?

In the last 30 days, did you ever eat less than you felt you should because there wasn't enough
money for food and/or the dining hall was not an option?