Survey on nutritional status,knowledge,attitudes and behaviors among medical students

Objective To explore nutritional status and related factors among medical students and analyse the difference in nutritional knowledge,attitudes and behaviors between students from city and countryside to provide reference evidence for the interventions.Methods The nutritional status of 1096 medical students was evaluated with body mass index,and their nutritional knowledge,attitude and behavior were investigated.The data was processed by Chi-square tests and Logistic Regression.Results The prevalence rate of malnutrition,overweight and obesity for the medical students was 15.3% and 3.5%,respectively.32.2% of students from city and 16.9% of students from countryside took active nutritional attitudes and showed healthier dietary behaviors.Generally,students from city took more active nutritional attitudes and showed healthier dietary behaviors than students from countryside.The difference of knowledgable rate of nutritional knowledge between two groups wasn't of statistical significance.Among factors which affected nutritional status,gender,the educational level of mother and having a breakfast every day were favorable factors compared to eating food after dinner and imbalanced diet as the risk factors.Conclusion It is necessary to lead students from countryside to get better dietary habits and nutritional attitudes.