Abstract

BERNARDES SPEXOTO, Maria Cláudia; GARCIA FERIN, Giovana  and  CAMPOS, Juliana Alvares Duarte Bonini. Pharmacology and biochemistry undergraduate students' concern for a healthy diet and nutrition knowledge. Nutr. Hosp. [online]. 2015, vol.31, n.4, pp.1813-1823. ISSN 1699-5198.  https://dx.doi.org/10.3305/nh.2015.31.4.8350.

Objective: To estimate the concern for a healthy diet and the nutrition knowledge of undergraduate students of a pharmacology and biochemistry program and their associations with the variables of interest. Methods: This cross-sectional study administered the Nutrition Knowledge Scale and the How is your diet? questionnaire to 381 students. The associations between concern for a healthy diet and nutrition knowledge and between these two factors and the demographic variables were measured by the chi-square test (χ²) or Fisher's exact test. The significance level was set at 5%. Results: The mean age of the students was 20.6 (standard deviation [SD] = 2.7) years; 78.2% were female students; their mean body mass index was 22.6 (SD = 3.7) kg/m²; and 73.5% had an appropriate body mass index-related nutritional status. Most students fell within the category "pay attention to your diet" (77.1%) and "moderate nutrition knowledge" (79.7%). Concern for a healthy diet was significantly associated with program year (p = 0.024), socioeconomic class (p = 0.012), and physical activity (p <0.001). Nutrition knowledge was associated only with program year (p < 0.001). Concern for a healthy diet was not associated with nutrition knowledge (p = 0.808). Conclusion: Physically inactive, first-year students from socioeconomic class B (US$ 1,046 - 1,872) were less concerned with a healthy diet. Such concern was not related to the students' nutrition knowledge.

Keywords : Biochemistry students; Healthy behaviors; Healthy foods; Nutrition knowledge; Pharmacology students.

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