Effect of Alcohol Consumption and Nutritional Knowledge on Body Weight and Composition in a Group of Piacenza Students

The increase of overweight and obesity in young Italian people, nowadays showed by several epidemiological data, has been related to the misuse of alcohol and to a lack in nutritional knowledge.

Thus the aim of our study was to investigate if different nutritional knowledge from could affect body composition and drinking habits of a cohort of local young people.

104 healthy subjects (56 males and 54 females) were recruited using oral advertisements among the students of 18-19 years-old belonging to the Istituto Agrario and the Istituto alberghiero Raineri-Marcora of Piacenza. The subjects were asked to complete a questionnaire on alcohol consumption and another one related to nutritional knowledge. Then anthropometric data were measured: height, weight, waist and hips circumferences, waist-hips ratio and skinfolds were evaluated for each subject and body fat mass was calculated.