Percentage of Adolescents Meeting Federal Fruit and Vegetable Intake Recommendations — Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, United States, 2017

Despite the benefits of fruit and vegetable consumption, few adolescents consume these recommended amounts (2-4). In 2013, only 8.5% of high school students met the recommendation for fruit consumption, and only 2.1% met the recommendation for vegetable consumption (2). To update the 2013 data, CDC analyzed data from the 2017 national and state Youth Risk Behavior Surveys (YRBSs) to describe the percentage of students who met intake recommendations, overall and by sex, school grade, and race/ethnicity. The median frequencies of fruit and vegetable consumption nationally were 0.9 and 1.1 times per day, respectively. Nationally, 7.1% of students met USDA intake recommendations for fruits (95% confidence interval [CI] = 4.0-10.3) and 2.0% for vegetables (upper 95% confidence limit = 7.9) using previously established scoring algorithms. State-specific estimates of the percentage of students meeting fruit intake recommendations ranged from 4.0% (Connecticut) to 9.3% (Louisiana), and the percentage meeting vegetable intake recommendations ranged from 0.6% (Kansas) to 3.7% (New Mexico). Additional efforts to expand the reach of existing school and community programs or to identify new effective strategies, such as social media approaches, might help address barriers and improve adolescent fruit and vegetable consumption.