Knowledge, attitude and practices among college going girls in reference to their breakfast consumption pattern

Abstract

Objective: Breakfast skipping is being considered as a major public health concern among young adults, especially the girls. Nutrition knowledge has been reported to be one of predictors of this dietary behaviour. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to examine the association between of nutrition related knowledge, attitude and practices with breakfast consumption habits of college going girls aged 18-23 years. Design: Data regarding nutrition knowledge, attitude and practices in relation to breakfast consumption was obtained by using a validated, pre-tested self-administered questionnaire. The subjects were classified into three groups according to total score obtained based on their knowledge, attitude and practices with breakfast consumption as Low, Moderate and High. In addition, correlation among knowledge, attitude and practices were also analysed to get better insight of the barriers that were responsible for the faulty habits of breakfast skipping. Setting: Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, India. Participants: College going girls aged 18-23 years (n=850). Results: Mean age of the participants was 18.95±1.40 years. Out of the total sample (n=850), 63% of the girls (n=536) were breakfast skippers. The findings related to knowledge, attitude and practices revealed that majority of them fall in the category of moderate. Significant correlation was found between knowledge attitude and practices of college going girls. Conclusions: The present study suggests that nutrition knowledge level is related to breakfast skipping among college going girls. Introduction The well-being of a nation is directly linked to the health of its citizens. Investing in health of college students is an investment in the health of the entire nation. Focusing on the healthy diet for young adults can have a long-term impact on their mental and physical health. When it comes to health and nutrition education, young adults (18-25 years) are frequently overlooked in preference to children and adults. In future, India will be dealing with number of illnesses that are exacerbated by nutritional inadequacies (Gopalan, 2013) [23]. Diet has a significant impact on human health and in order to maintain a healthy body and mind, one must consume optimum amount of food at proper time. Scientific evidence reveals that nutrients in diet provide the body with energy and also influence one's way of living. Breakfast, the first meal of the day, is regarded as most critical, since it has the greatest impact on a person's overall health. People who don't have breakfast aren't getting enough of the nutrients they need, such as carbohydrates, protein, and fat. Skipping breakfast has been linked to a variety of negative outcomes, including mood swings, mental anguish and inability to concentrate in studies, difficulty in solving problems, weariness and laziness. Moreover, studies suggest that poor breakfast habits around the age of 16 years predict the metabolic syndrome especially high central obesity and high fasting glucose at an average age of 43 years (Wennberg et al., 2015) [55]. According to Pedersen et al., (2013) [44] , teenagers who had poor breakfast intake when they were 15 years old continued to have low breakfast consumption when they were 19 and 27 years old. Pendergast et al., (2016) [45] concluded that among people aged 18 to 30 years, breakfast was the least consumed meal (14-88 percent),