Academics in health and knowledge about nutritional information

Abstract

The nutritional knowledge is a element of the health level and very relevant in the training of students in the health field. The objective of the study was to verify the knowledge of university students in the health area about nutritional information in foods. Biomedicine, nursing, pharmacy, physiotherapy, medicine, nutrition and psychology students answered questions about labels, fibers, fats, sugars and sodium in the Nutrition Knowledge Questionnaire. The correct answers were categorized into: ≤ 50% "low knowledge", 51 to 69%, "intermediate knowledge" and ≥ 70% "high knowledge". A total of 259 responses, 139 were from the nutrition course and 120 from the other courses. The mean age was 28 ± 10.5 years, with 90.3% female and 9.7% male. The responses of all students, showed “high” knowledge for labels (75.2%), fibers (70.5%), fat (72.8%) and sodium (95.4%) and “intermediate” for sugar (63.3%). By excluding the responses of nutrition course, the answers showed "low" knowledge to fiber (42.3%) and sugar (46.6%), "intermediate" for fat (65%) and labels (65.3%) and “high” for sodium (94.2%). It was observed that the knowledge of food and nutrition among students in the health area, except nutrition, needs to be improved, especially with regard to the content of fibers, sugars, fats in food and reading labels.