A Study on Lifestyles, Dietary Habits, Nutrition Knowledge and Dietary behaviors of Male University Students According to Residence Type

Hwang, Jung Hyun; Lee, Hong Mie

Abstract

For the purposes of participation in research projects, living in a laboratory has become popular among male university students who tend to have less opportunity for nutrition education and overestimate their own health, suggesting possibilities of many undesirable practices of lifestyle and dietary habits. Therefore, this study was conducted to investigate and compare health-related lifestyle practices, dietary habits, nutrition knowledge, food preference and dietary behaviors of the male university students according to residence type. The subjects were 260 (34, 15, 44, and 167, respectively for lab-living, self-boarding, dormitory and commuting) male engineering majors in the Gyeonggi area. Self-administered questionnaires consisted of general characteristics, health-related lifestyle practices, dietary habits, fast food consumption, nutrition knowledge, preference for foods and tastes, and selfexamination of dietary behaviors. Lab-living subjects showed many undesirable practices, particularly with more smokers (p < 0.05), irregular eating (p < 0.01), overeating (p < 0.05) and skipping breakfast (p < 0.01), compared to the dormitory students and more time in computer/TV usage (p < 0.05), overeating (p < 0.05), more frequent use of fastfood (p < 0.05), less nutrition knowledge (p < 0.01) and less intake of milk/dairy products (p < 0.01) and fruits (p < 0.01), compared to commuting subjects. More smokers (p < 0.05) and irregular (p < 0.01) and unrelaxed meal times (p < 0.05), compared to the dormitory group, and less intake of fruits (p < 0.01) and dietary fiber (p < 0.01), compared to the commuting group were shown as undesirable practices of the self-boarding group. Therefore, continuous effort should be made to correct undesirable health- and diet-related practices found in this study in order to improve nutritional status as well as general health by developing a nutrition education program and contents of lectures focusing on more specific problems according to each subgroup such as lab-living and self-boarding male university students.