Food literacy and diet quality diverge only modestly across Swedish youth diets
In Gothenburg, a cross-sectional study of healthy 16- to 24-year-olds found broadly similar food literacy across vegan, lacto-ovo-vegetarian, pescatarian, and omnivorous diets, with only small differences separating the groups. The analysis centered on three food literacy competencies — general nutrition knowledge (GNK), critical nutrition literacy (CNL), and food skills — and paired those measures with a Diet Quality Index aligned to the Nordic Nutrition Recommendations 2023.The cohort included 235 participants. Mean GNK reached 50.8 out of 72, a level categorized as moderate, and diet group alone did not explain meaningful variation in that score. In practice, this suggests that choosing a vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian, or omnivorous pattern does not automatically translate into better or worse nutrition knowledge. The more relevant question is whether young people can convert knowledge into everyday food choices, meal planning, and food preparation habits that fit a nutritionally complete diet.One result stood out sharply: vegans reported cooking meals at home almost daily far more often than pescatarians or omnivores. Home cooking rates were 68.3% among vegans, compared with 38.2% among pescatarians and 34.4% among omnivores. That pattern is clinically plausible. A vegan diet often demands more active ingredient selection, label reading, and meal construction to meet protein, iron, calcium, iodine, vitamin B12, and overall energy needs. Daily cooking may therefore function as a proxy for greater hands-on food management, not merely as a lifestyle preference.
Nutrition knowledge, not diet label alone, tracked with diet quality
The overall diet quality picture was strong. The mean total DQI score was 28.9 out of 34, suggesting that most participants were already eating relatively well by the study’s scoring system. One section lagged behind the rest: food-based dietary guidelines scored 3.1 out of 6, pointing to incomplete alignment with the specific recommendations embedded in NNR2023. In other words, the cohort’s diets looked better than average on the whole, but still left room for improvement in the practical details that matter for long-term cardiovascular and metabolic health.Vegans posted a slightly higher total DQI than omnivores, 29.3 versus 28.5, a difference that reached statistical significance. The gap was small, yet it is informative because it runs counter to the common assumption that plant-based eating is uniformly healthier by default. A diet can be vegan and still be suboptimal if it relies too heavily on refined grains, processed substitutes, or inconsistent meal structure. Conversely, an omnivorous diet can score well if it is built around high-quality foods and regular meals prepared with nutritional intent.The regression analysis sharpened the message. GNK was significantly associated with total DQI, and so was the frequency of eating meals pre-prepared outside the home. The direction of the latter relationship matters at the bedside and in public health planning: when meals are regularly assembled elsewhere, control over ingredient quality, portion balance, and nutrient density often shrinks. For adolescents and young adults, especially those balancing school, work, and social schedules, convenience food can quietly dilute diet quality even when general awareness of healthy eating is fairly good.
Why food literacy matters when youth choose their own diet pattern
Food literacy is not a single skill. It blends knowledge, judgment, and practical execution. GNK captures baseline understanding of nutrition; CNL reflects the ability to evaluate claims, interpret information, and navigate competing messages; food skills cover the hands-on tasks required to turn intent into meals. In a group of late adolescents and young adults, those competencies may matter as much as — or more than — the broad dietary label attached to the person’s eating pattern.The small but significant CNL advantage among vegans, compared with pescatarians, may reflect the information burden that accompanies a fully plant-based diet. Vegan eating often requires more scrutiny of fortification, hidden animal-derived ingredients, and nutrient adequacy. That kind of constant evaluation can strengthen critical nutritional thinking. Still, the study did not show large separations between dietary groups, which argues against overinterpreting the label itself as a marker of expertise or diet quality.Cross-sectional design limits causal claims. The data cannot show whether stronger nutrition knowledge leads to better diet quality, whether higher-quality diets reinforce better knowledge, or whether a third factor — family habits, education, socioeconomic context, cooking access, or personal motivation — drives both. Even so, the associations are operationally useful. They point to the type of support that could improve diet quality in youth: practical nutrition education, cooking competence, and strategies to reduce dependence on pre-prepared meals.For clinicians and public health professionals, the finding has a straightforward implication. Advising a young person to “eat better” is too vague to be useful. Support should focus on the mechanics of eating well: understanding nutrient sources, planning meals, building confidence in the kitchen, and making smarter choices when food is bought outside the home. Those behaviors are especially relevant for youth who self-select into vegan or other restrictive patterns, but they apply just as much to omnivorous eaters whose diets may drift toward convenience rather than quality.
A practical signal for youth nutrition support in Sweden
The study’s most clinically relevant message is not that one dietary pattern wins outright. It is that food literacy competencies, especially general nutrition knowledge, are tied to diet quality across dietary groups. Youth with stronger knowledge tended to have better DQI scores, while frequent reliance on meals prepared outside the home was linked to lower diet quality. The association fits everyday nutrition practice: when young people can understand recommendations and act on them consistently, their diets tend to align more closely with national guidance.Swedish youth in this sample were already doing relatively well overall, which makes the remaining gaps more instructive. A high average DQI does not erase the need for targeted support, especially around food-based dietary guidelines where the score was lower than the rest of the index. The challenge is less about convincing young people to adopt a particular identity-based diet and more about helping them build the competencies that keep any diet nutritionally sound over time.Future work should follow these participants longitudinally and test whether interventions that strengthen nutrition knowledge, critical appraisal skills, and home cooking habits can shift diet quality in measurable ways. The current data stop short of proving cause and effect, but they do identify a clear pressure point: when youth eat more meals prepared outside the home and have weaker nutrition knowledge, diet quality slips.