Eureka! Institutional Repository

In recent decades, many studies have focused their attention on examining dietary compliance of people with food allergies and on investigating the factors that influence or determine it. The aim of the present study was to investigate the compliance with avoidance diets in children with food allergy, who are hospital controlled. In a secondary level, factors that may be related with the children’s’ compliance, such as the type of food allergy, age, body weight status, number of meals per day, frequency of the three main meals consumed per week, as well as the family history of food allergy were examined. For the data collection, there was used a demographic profile questionnaire, the Youth Adolescent Food Frequency Questionnaire (YAQ), a dietary habits questionnaire, a floor stadiometer, and a digital scale. They were categorized, based on their age, into three groups. The first group consisted of 11 infants (44%), the second of 8 toddlers (32%) and the third of 6 schooladolescents (24%). From the analysis of the results it was shown that the majority of children did not comply with the food avoidance diets overall (68%), by age (54.5% infants, 75% toddlers, 83.3% to school-adolescents), by sex (boys 56.3%, girls 88.9%), by body weight status (underweight 100.0%, normal weight 68.4%, overweight 50%, obese 100%) and by type of food allergy (milk 87.5%, wheat 66.7%, egg 62.5%, nuts 60%). No statistically significant differences were found between the type of food allergy, the age, the body weight status, the gender, the number of meals per day, the frequency of the three main meals consumed per week and the family history of food allergy with the children’s compliance with the food avoidance diets, after the use of Chi-square test and Fisher's exact test. In contrast, statistically significant negative correlation between the frequency of dinner consumption per week and the compliance with avoidance diets was found. In conclusion, from the analysis of the results it appeared that the compliance rates with avoidance diets of children with food allergies in Greece are quite low and it is necessary to investigate other factors, that may affect ix their compliance, in order to implement effective intervention programs and to inform both children and their parents.