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By: Sailaja Busi, Saneesha, Santhiya G., and Salu Charles.
1.Professor cum Vice-Principal, Department of Nursing, Sri Shankara College of Nursing, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India.
2.Student, Department of Nursing, Sri Shankara College of Nursing, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India.
The prevalence of nutritional deficiency and obesity increased day by day due to inappropriate dietary practices and attitudes. A cross-sectional study was carried out with 250 female hostel residents aged 18 to 25 years, using a convenience sampling method to select the participants. A structured questionnaire was used to data collected which contains demographic variables: anthropometric measurements and questions regarding nutrition and dietary practices. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. The study shown that most of the girls were between 19–21 years of age and most of them were 3rd year students. 34.4% of the girls preferred a vegetarian diet and statistically significant with a risk of nutritional deficiency (p < 0.01). The association between skipped meals and snacking patterns with the risk of nutritional deficiency was significant (p < 0.05). The results shown that 64.8% of the girls had normal BMI. The prevalence of overweight and obesity were among 12.8% and 18.8% girls are underweighted, whereas 3.6% of girls are in severe underweight, 39.2% of the girls had poor nutritional knowledge, and 25.6% of students had adequate knowledge. The study concluded that girls residing in the hostel had poor nutritional knowledge and there is a risk of developing nutritional deficiencies. Food and nutritional knowledge will affect the quality of dietary intake, food purchasing behavior, lifestyle, attitude, and nutritional status of the individual.
Keywords: Nutritional status, nutritional knowledge, nutritional deficiencies, food choices,eating behaviours, anthropometry
Citation:
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