Barriers and Facilitators to Following the Dietary Guidelines for Vegetable Intake: Follow-up of an Intervention to Increase Vegetable Consumption

The Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) stress the importance of a diet high in fruits and vegetables (FV) to achieve health benefits. Despite the recommendations, adherence is low; only 12% of the population meets the recommendation for fruits and even less of the population (9%) meets the recommendation for vegetables. Recently, it was found that vegetable consumption increased when individuals were provided the recommended daily amounts while participating in a clinical study, but returned to pre-study low levels when vegetables were no longer supplied. This result suggests that habitual consumption of FV is strongly regulated by behaviors influenced by social, environmental, and/or individual factors. Therefore, identifying regulatory factors of vegetable consumption will greatly assist in developing successful strategies to increase vegetable intake to achieve health benefits. The overall objective of this study is to examine both barriers and facilitators to adherence to consuming DGA-recommended amounts of vegetables in participants who completed a randomized controlled trial with provided vegetables or who were in a control group, using the Nominal Group Technique (NGT).