Abstract

Objective: To examine the impact of presenting healthy snack foods on the knowledge of the key recommendations for healthy eating patterns among university students.
Design: Cross sectional. The four-week intervention included the presentation of healthy snacks and informative leaflets to the participants. Each week featured a key recommendation of healthy eating (i.e. eat more dietary fiber) that was given in dietary guidelines. A nutrition knowledge questionnaire was administered pre and post-intervention. The questionnaire included some items from the General Nutrition Knowledge Questionnaire (GNKQ) by Parmenter and Wardle [1].
Setting: Participants were presented with the snacks and informative leaflets in their classrooms in their lecturers` presence. Test and re-test were taken under the same setting.
Participants: First year undergraduate students (n=378) studying a mandatory course at a remote campus.
Results: When the items belonging to the same theme (i.e. key recommendation) were grouped and analysed, no significant differences were observed in the distribution of responses (i.e. correct, incorrect and unsure) for “dietary fiber”, “salt” and “sugar” after the intervention. However, the change in the distribution of the responses relevant to “less saturated fat and trans-fat” was found to be statistically significant (p<0.05).
Conclusions: The intervention elicited positive response from the students and lecturers, who commented that the intervention made them more aware of healthy eating. There is a need for other nutrition education interventions (with longer durations) to improve eating behaviours of university students. We strongly recommend the consideration of nutrition-related modules in the higher education curriculum.