Nutritional status and dietary behaviors among college students

Objective To explore nutrition status and dietary behaviors among college students for the improvement of their nutritional health.Methods Questionnaires were distributed to 871 college students from Wuhan Polytechnic University to collect information on their nutritional status and dietary behaviors.The students were divided into different groups according to their hometown.Body mass index was used to evaluate students' nutritional condition.Results Among the students 20.1%(175) were malnutrition,and 0.7%(6) were fat.There were 13.5% of male(49) and 24.8% of female(26) were malnutrition.The ratio of malnutrition in female college students was significantly higher than that of in male college students.There were significant differences between students with different hometown and different gender in dietary speed,food structure,and monthly food consumption.The result of factor analysis showed that the contridution of the first three factors was up to 71% and the first three factors played the most important roles in weekly fruit consumption,monthly food consumption,and weekly milk consumption.Conclusion The main reasons for nutrition imbalance among college students are ecomomical limitation and nutritional knowledge.The education about nutrition and the improvement of food quality among college suudents should be strengthened to improve nutritional health of college students.