Dietary oil profile in Northwest of Iran before and after a short-term, educational public campaign

Abstract

Using unhealthy dietary oils and fats is a major public problem in Iran and many other countries. The objective of this study was to examine the impact of a short-term, public educational campaign on correcting knowledge, attitude and practice of a target population regarding dietary oils. In this knowledge, Attitude and Practice (KAP), combined pretest and posttest, cross-sectional study, five cities in northwestern Iran with poor-to-moderate socioeconomical status were randomly selected. Literate, married females aged 18-45 years were randomly selected and questioned using a standard, validated questionnaire from September 2010 through November 2011. Knowledge, attitude and practice of the sampled population in terms of dietary oils were assessed before (pretest, n = 920) and after (posttest, n = 735) a six-month, public educational campaign through the mass media and other similar methods. Domains of the questionnaire were about type of healthy oils/fats, proper using/reusing, appropriate way of keeping/storing and criteria for purchasing. At the post test, all the investigated domains except for knowledge about correct action in the cases with oil color change and attitude toward choosing between high-fat and low-fat diets were significantly improved (p<0.01). The most dramatic change was in terms of knowledge about the most healthiest dietary oil. The rate of unhealthy oil consumption decreased by roughly 20% (from 70-50%) after the educational campaign in the target population. According to the findings of the present study, a short term, public educational campaign can correct knowledge, attitude and practice of a target population even with a poor-to-moderate socioeconomical status regarding healthy way of dietary oil use. The results of the present work may be found useful by similar societies with such a problem.