Journal of Nutrition & Food Sciences
Open Access

Abstract

A Research for Nutritional Knowledge and Eating Habits of Medical Students in Hengyan

Xiaoping Long, Lihu Xie, Haoyan Xiao, Xuan Liu, Qiongshi Hu, Shuang Wu, Jiange Wu, Yaodong Liu, Tianyi Jiang*

Nutrition is an important factor for ensuring growth and development. Nutritional knowledge is one of the factors affecting eating habits and maintaining a healthy life. However, nutritional knowledge and life practices of medical students in Hengyang have not been studied. In the current study, a self-reported questionnaire was administered to 4950 students, ranging in age from 18 to 23 years. Medical students from the University of South China, Human Polytechnic of Environment and Biology, Health School of Nuclear Industry (2430 male and 2520 female) participated in this research. The data was analyzed by chi-square test using IBM SPSS Statistics v. 22.0 and p value less than 0.01 was considered statistically significant. Our results showed that 71.45% (95% CI: 8.22%, 11.21%) of students had a normal BMI and 2.18% (95% CI: 4.35%, 6.92%) of students were underweight. The prevalence of overweight and obesity was 26.36% (95% CI: 18.63%, 24.25%). In terms of nutritional knowledge status, 90.34% of all students showed satisfactory knowledge and no significant difference was observed between males and females. Breakfast skipping was present habit in girls and underweight students. Even though students understand the importance of taking nutritional balanced food, whereas only a small number of students take it into consideration when they are selecting food. Especially high consumption of alcohol and soft drinks was noted for males, while females showed high consumption of sweets. Takeout food was quite practiced habit, especially in overweight and obese students. Furthermore, most of the students exhibited external eating when being stress out at school. In conclusion, our study provided a new understanding of nutritional knowledge and eating behaviors among medical students. In addition, psychological counseling for students is necessary to help students to alleviate stress. Finally, rectifying the bad eating behaviors.

Published Date: 2025-04-09; Received Date: 2023-11-08