Weight-related issues—including poor dietary intake, inadequate physical activity, body image concerns, and dangerous weight-control practices—negatively affect the lives of millions of Americans and remain one of the nation’s leading public health challenges. Since it started in the 1990s, Project EAT (Eating and Activity over Time) has been one of the largest and most comprehensive studies of diet and weight-related health challenges. Led by Regents Professor Dianne Neumark-Sztainer, the Project EAT study team has helped inform public health strategies and promote healthy eating, physical activity, and body satisfaction among young people and their families.

With a new Outstanding Investigator Award (R35) from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute at the National Institutes of Health, Neumark-Sztainer and her team will build on that research with a groundbreaking new phase of Project EAT that — for the first time — focuses on adolescents and young adults from Generation Z. Generally defined as people born between the late 1990s and the early 2010s, people from this generation are the first to grow up with access to the Internet and to use portable digital technology from a young age. Neumark-Sztainer said analyzing the impact of these and other factors on eating, weight, and body satisfaction will be among the goals of the new study.

“Gen Z adolescents and young adults have grown up in a world in which technology is highly prevalent, social media use is commonplace, new weight loss drugs have emerged, and wearables for tracking eating and activity are commonly used,” Neumark-Sztainer says. “At the same time, mindfulness practices, such as yoga, meditation, and mindful eating have also gained more attention with many people in this generation.

“Over the past two decades, Project EAT has focused on the Millennial generation to inform what is one of the largest and most comprehensive studies of its kind. We are thrilled by the opportunity to update and extend this evidence base to help improve the health and wellbeing of the current generation of adolescents and young adults,” she said.

To conduct the study, researchers will undertake a range of actions, including a national sample of 2,000 Gen Z adolescents and young adults, an intergenerational study with 1,000 parent-child pairs to explore how weight-related behaviors and attitudes may be passed down, and qualitative interviews to capture social and environmental influences on eating, physical activity, and body satisfaction.

Another feature of the study is its deep integration of community partnerships. To help ensure that all data gathered through the project makes a positive impact on local communities, Project EAT staff will work in partnership with two community advisory boards—one composed of adolescents and young adults, and one made up of professionals from relevant fields.

This prestigious award, of just over seven million dollars, will run for a period of seven years.  Results will be widely shared in a number of ways, including presentations and publications directed toward scientific and community audiences.