Effect of Nutrition Education on Improving Diet Behavior of University Students

Park, Myoung Soon; Kim, Seong Ai

Abstract

This study was to investigate the changes in nutrition knowledge, nutrition attitude and food habit during 'meal management and diet' course to nonmajor university students by questionnaires. 280 students of Chungnam university who registered nonmajor 'meal management and diet' course in the 2003 were the subjects. The results of this study are as follows. BMIs of male and female students were 21.5 and 19.3. According to BMI, underweight subjects were 24.3%, normal and overweight (danger & obesity) subjects were each 62.4% and 13.6%, respectively. The nutrition knowledge scores significantly (p < 0.001) increased from 12.1 to 14.0 after the lecture, and the uncertainty rate of nutrition knowledge decreased significantly. Also, there were no significant differences in nutrition attitude score (39.5 to 39.8 points). Female subjects showed significantly (p < 0.05) higher nutrition knowledge scores (12.3 points) than male (11.4 points). 20% of the subjects smoked and 82.9% had alcohol drinks and 24.4% exercised more than 3 times per week. The subjects who ate regular meals significantly increased from 9.3 to 12.5% after the lecture, and smoking subjects decreased from 20 to 13%, but alcohol drinking subjects did not changed significantly.