INFLUENCE OF NUTRITIONAL KNOWLEDGE ON THE FOOD CHOICE

ABSTRACT

This study investigated the influence of nutritional knowledge on the food choice and eating habit of university of Benin undergraduate students. To address this, eight research questions were raised to guide the study and two hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 level of significance. The study employed a descriptive survey research design. The population of the study consisted of undergraduate students in faculties of Arts, Education and Life Sciences. A purposive sampling technique was used in selecting 100 students from these faculties. The instrument for data collection was a structured questionnaire titled ‘Nutritional Knowledge Questionnaire’ (NKQ). The instrument was however subjected to face validity by the researcher’s supervisor and two other lectures in the Department of Vocational Technical Education in order to ensure content validity of the instrument. To determine the reliability of the instrument for the study, the test-re-test reliability method was adopted to establish the reliability of the instrument. A pre-test of the questionnaire was conducted using respondents drawn from outside the target population. The instrument was administered to twenty respondents. The responses of the respondents were coded and analyzed using the statistical package for social science (SPSS) software which gave reliability co-efficient of 0.83. The data collected were analyzed using frequency, percentage, mean(x), standard deviation (SD), and two sample independent ttest using Statistical Packages for the Social Science (SPSS). The findings from the study revealed that nutritional knowledge influence the eating habits of undergraduate students in university of Benin. The major findings of the study shows that nutritional knowledge, accessibility, finance, health, social norms influence food choice and eating habit of undergraduate students in university of Benin to a high extent. It was however concluded that low nutritional knowledge among undergraduate would result in bad eating habit which means that nutritional knowledge influence food choice and eating habit of university of Benin undergraduate students. Based on the findings, it was recommended among others that school management should organize seminars and workshops for students where dieticians can educate them on the right type of eating habits.