Nutritional Knowledge, Attitude and Practice of North West Households in Iran: Is Knowledge likely to Become Practice?

BACKGROUND

Nutritional factors have an important role in the incidence of non-communicable diseases and they are strong predictors of cardiovascular risk among adolescents. This study was conducted to assess the Knowledge, Attitude and Practice (KAP) of urban and rural households towards the principles of nutrition in West Azerbaijan Province.

DESIGN AND METHODS

This cross sectional population based study was conducted among 455 urban and rural households. The sampling method at households' level in each area was the single stage cluster sampling. Data were collected by a structured questionnaire and through the interview with the eligible subject in each household. Analyses were performed using SPSS 20 statistical software. For qualitative data, results were presented as frequency and percentage.

RESULTS

Out of a total of 455 households that were selected as overall sample size, 272 (59.8%) were in urban areas and 183 (40.2%) in rural areas. More than 50% of the households in both urban and rural areas were aware of food groups. More than 40% of the households in both urban and rural areas knew about the roles of food groups and the level of knowledge most frequently encountered was about the role of milk and dairy group in urban areas (88.6%). Vitamin intake associated with the role of fruits (68%) and vegetables (62.5%) had the highest frequency. Most of the respondents declared that they consumed certain foods for their effects related to health improvement and disease prevention. The results showed that 45.2-99.8% of them had favorable attitudes. Most of the households consumed red meat, poultry, egg and legumes weekly, whereas fish was eaten rarely. Fruits, vegetables, sugar and dairy were consumed daily in most of the households.

CONCLUSION

Higher nutrition knowledge is associated with better practice and diet quality. Our findings suggest that nutrition education should be integrated in a household training program.