[Level of knowledge on food and nutrition among groups of pupils of the last class of secondary schools].

BACKGROUND

Common nutritional faults affect health of many Poles. Health state of Poles is worse than most of Europeans and is not improving. Nutritional behaviors of young people are caused by limited nutritional knowledge learned during consecutive stages of school education. Nutritional education is considered less important, theoretical knowledge and practice is not correlated and teacher's knowledge is limited.

OBJECTIVE

The aim of this study was to study different school programs and to assess the level of nutritional knowledge among selected pupils of last classes of secondary school in Warsaw.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

The study was conducted in November 2008 on 210 students with the specific author's questionnaire.

RESULTS

There is wide nutritional educational program in schools starting from kindergarten through schools of different levels. The nutritional education program is not consistent likely due to dispersion of material among different subjects. In nutritional knowledge tests none of the pupil reached 75% of maximum points and half of them did not reach 50%. Pupils did not know what is their energetic requirement (answers differ from 100 kcal/day to 10000 kcal/day). They were unable to determine the caloric of oil (only 1/3 knows that it is the most caloric product). More than half of pupils answered that sugar is the most caloric product. The knowledge of vitamin and minerals content is completely not known to pupils. Most of pupils were unable to correctly indicate two products which are the sources of vitamin C (approximately 60%), vitamin A (almost 75%) and iron (over 60%). Pupils have more information on protein sources. Surprisingly it was easier for them to indicate products which are not a good source of valuable proteins than the good source of proteins. Pupils did not know what is recommended frequency of milk, fish, vegetables and plant oil consumption.

CONCLUSIONS

Results indicate that the core curriculum of education is proper but students had little knowledge of nutrition. The majority of respondents (95%) did not received half of the available points, and nobody scored very good result. It has been found that there is insufficient knowledge of products energy values and energy daily requirements for teenagers, sources of nutrients, as well as basic nutritional guidelines.