College students constitute a significant proportion of the young adult population in Norway. They are in their reproductive years, which is of interest regarding diet and preconception health. Our objective was to assess young college students’ diet and nutrient intake in relation to national dietary recommendations and assess the probability of inadequate micronutrient intake for both genders using the Nordic Nutrition Recommendations, and also to evaluate its consequences on preconception health and create a groundwork for future interventions on this group. At the University of Agder (UiA), we enrolled 622 students aged 18–40 years for a cross-sectional study of student's diet, StudentKost. The students completed a food frequency questionnaire, including questions of supplement use, over the past 4 weeks. Intake of fruits, vegetables, oily fish, and whole grain was lower than recommended, as were mean intake of folate, iron, and iodine. Our main findings are that students have a somewhat suboptimal diet compared to the Norwegian dietary guidelines. Male students had generally lower diet quality than females. Compared to the Nordic Nutrition Recommendations (NNR), we also saw a relatively high probability of inadequate intake of several micronutrients and a very high probability for some micronutrients in a significant portion of the sample. Public health effort should be directed towards improving students and young adults’ diet in general, and interventions towards improving preconception health should be explored. The low participation rate limits the generalizability of our findings. Our findings encourage further investigation into young adults’ diet.

The aim of this study was to identify social and biological drivers of fetal growth by examining associations with household, preconception, and pregnancy factors in a cohort from Soweto, South Africa. Complete data and ultrasound scans were collected on 519 women between 2013 and 2016 at 6 time points during pregnancy (<14, 14–18, 19–23, 24–28, 29–33 weeks, and 34–38 weeks). Household-level factors, preconception health, baseline body mass index (BMI), and demographic data were collected at the first visit. During pregnancy, gestational weight gain (GWG; kg/week) was calculated. At 24–28 weeks of gestation, oral glucose tolerance test was used to determine gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) status, and hypertension status was characterised. Longitudinal growth in head circumference, abdominal circumference, biparietal diameter, and femur length were modelled using the Superimposition by Translation and Rotation, a shape-invariant model which produces growth curves against gestational age. A priori identified exposure variables were then included in a series of sex-stratified hierarchical regression models for each fetal growth outcome. No household-level factors were associated with fetal growth. Maternal BMI at baseline was positively associated with all outcome parameters in males and females. Both GWG (in males and females) and GDM (in males) were significant positive predictors of abdominal growth. Males showed more responsiveness to abdominal growth, while females were more responsive to linear growth. Thus, fetal growth was largely predicted by maternal biological factors, and sexual dimorphism in the responsiveness of fetal biometry to biological exposures was evident.