Dietary patterns and school performance: evidence from a sample of adolescents in Sicily, Italy

Background. Academic success in adolescence is a strong predictor of future wealth, productivity and health. While unhealthy dietary habits might be detrimental for academic outcomes, a positive association between healthy diet and school performance was found in adolescents worldwide. Study design. A total of 213 adolescents (15 to 18 years old; 48% boys), attending three high schools in the urban area of Eastern Sicily, were enrolled in a cross-sectional study. Methods. Dietary data and informations about weekly consumption of main meals were collected administering a Food Frequency Questionnaire. The Mediterranean Diet Score and Principal Component Analysis were used to identify a priori and a posteriori dietary patterns, respectively. School performance was assessed through school marks, using the previous year as reference. Results. The Mediterranean Diet Score was weakly but positively correlated with performance in Italian, Science and Physical Education (p-values <0.05). Similarly, the adherence to the prudent dietary pattern weakly positively correlated with marks in Mathematics. In contrast, we demonstrated a weak but significant negative correlation between adherence to the western dietary pattern and the performance in several subjects. The energy dense dietary pattern was instead negatively correlated with mark in Italian. We also showed that adolescents regularly eating all main meals have a better performance in several subjects, when compared to those who skipped at least one meal. Conclusions. The promotion of healthy diet in youth should be a priority for Public Health, in order to improve adolescents' quality of life and prevent negative health and social outcomes later in life.