Influência da formação acadêmica em Nutrição na expressão da neofobia alimentar

Abstract

This study sought to evaluate the influence of academic training in nutrition on the incidence of neophobic feeding behavior. It is a cross-sectional study conducted with 247 students, of both sexes and mean age of 24.6 ± 6.8 years, enrolled in the first and last year of the undergraduate course in nutrition and other higher education courses in the area of health science. The level of food neophobia was evaluated through the Food Neophobia Scale associated with a behavioral measure obtained from the choice between known or unknown food. In accordance with the results, the students who were embarking on the nutrition course had higher food neophobia scores than the students nearing the end of the course. However, this difference was not observed when compared with freshmen and seniors studying in other courses. In the behavioral assessment, it was seen that most of the seniors from the nutrition course chose the unknown preparation, while in the other groups the majority chose the known preparation. The results suggest that academic training in Nutrition may have an influence on the incidence of food neophobia.