Nutrition Knowledge, Dietary Attitudes, Dietary Habits and Awareness of Food-Nutrition Labelling by Girl's High School Students

Cho, Su Hee; Yu, Hyeon Hee

Abstract

This study was carried out to investigate the nutrition knowledge, dietary attitudes, and dietary habits of girl's high school students in Kunsan, and to investigate their recognition of food-nutrition labeling. The results are summarized as follows. General nutrition knowledge is relatively low, with an average of 0.57. It was shown that high school female students skipped breakfast rather than lunch or dinner, with a skipping rate of 28.9% for breakfast, 0.7% for lunch, and 8.6% for dinner. Regarding snacks, 35.5% of all the surveyed students had 1 snack per day, with 31.9% having them between lunch and dinner. The most popular snacks include biscuits (22.3%), noodles (18.3%) and bakery (13.3%). The most popular response was that students 'sometimes checked' the food label of processed domestic and imported processed food. The level of satisfaction with food labels is moderate, with an average of 2.96, out of 5. The most satisfactory title about food labels was 'helpful for food selection' with 3.19. On the other hand, the least satisfactory title was 'understands the label' with 2.78. Regarding the identification of the nutrition labeling, the highest response was 'sometimes watched, sometimes not,' with 40.5%. Products which were most often checked were milk/milk products (3.44), snacks/bread (3.33), and soft drinks (3.07). Among nutrition labeling items, total calories was the most important, followed by fat, carbohydrate, cholesterol and calcium. The question regarding the knowledge of nutrition labeling rated an average of 0.58 (out of 1). There was a significant positive correlation between the degree of the nutrition label verification and the dietary attitude score, along with the nutrition labeling knowledge and the nutrition knowledge score of the subjects. On the other hand, the degree of the nutrition label verification and the knowledge on nutrition labeling had a significant negative correlation. Hence, it is of the opinion that education on properly reading nutrient information is necessary to enable adolescents to apply that in real life. Furthermore, labeling nutritional information on processed food through a more comprehensive method is deemed necessary as a supporting measure.