engleski

EATING HABITS OF CROATIAN HEALTHCARE AND NON-HEALTHCARE UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

Eating habits affect people’s health and potentially carry bad consequences, such as some carcinogenic (e.g. colon cancer) and chronic diseases, and students are considered a risk group of bad nutrition habits. By entering the student age, the life and nutritional habits of the young people change and therefore the aim of this research is to determine the dietary habits of uni-versity students, their attitudes towards poor nutrition and the consequences of the same, and their interest in further education on the proper diet.The study on nutrition habits of students was con-ducted through a web-based questionnaire (Google forms) from January 08 to September 19, 2018 with 800 students participating from all Croatian universi-ties. There was 32.4% of healthcare students and 67.6% of non-healthcare students (86.1% of female students and 13.9% of male students). The questionnaire con-tains 27 questions pertaining to the: place of residence, age, sex, nutrition habits and attitudes towards the consequences of poor diet. The results obtained were analyzed using computerized program for descriptive statistics.The eating habits of healthcare students do not dif-fer from those of non-healthcare students. The results show that students have a positive input of fruits and vegetables, they regularly eat breakfast, consume car-bonated drinks in small quantities, but have a lack of intake of: fish, olive oil and whole grains. In practice, students consume fast food at a very high percentage (50%). Also, students’ knowledge of the consequenc-es of unhealthy eating is high, 86% of them think that poor nutrition can be the cause of some diseases. More than half of the students, 63.5% of them, think that there should be some kind of education about the right diet regardless of the university orientation.More work should be done on disseminating aware-ness and educating young people in order to reduce the rate of carcinogenic and chronic diseases that unhealthy diets bring.

Eating habits ; University students ; Attitudes ; Knowledge ; Carcinogenic diseases

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