2020 Volume 71 Issue 11 Pages 711-718
It is generally recognized that nutrition knowledge (NK) weakly influences healthy dietary habits, such as fruit and vegetable ingestion, although research in this area is scant in Japan. The purpose of this study is to develop an NK questionnaire for high school students in Japan and to investigate the relationship between NK and dietary habits, body mass index (BMI), and daily habits such as TV and exercise.
The participants were 202 (99 male and 103 female) high school students in Akita Prefecture. The first 54 participants were retested to examine the reliability and validity of the questionnaire at a two-week interval. NK was assessed via 20 questions with four choices each, with one point given for correct responses and zero points for incorrect responses. The correlation coefficient between the first and second NK score was 0.750, and Cronbach's alpha was 0.529 and 0.419, respectively.
The average NK scores were 11.3 ± 2.7 points for males and 11.8 ± 2.9 points for females, which was not statistically significant. Food frequency, BMI, and lifestyle habits were compared among four groups classified according to the NK score. There was a significant difference in the frequency of consuming milk/milk products (χ2 = 21.40, p < 0.01), but statistical differences were not observed for other foods, including fruits/vegetables, BMI, and lifestyle habits. Our results and those of previous studies conducted in Japan suggest that the relationship between NK and healthy dietary habits may be difficult to demonstrate in the Japanese population.
