Abstract
Adequate intake of nutrition is important for bone formation and the prevention of osteoporosis. Since youth is a critical period for developing and maintaining maximal bone density (peak bone mass), nutritional education related to bone metabolism is needed for young people. In this study, we examined the relationship between the level of knowledge related to bone metabolism and dietary behavior in Japanese university students.
A self-completed questionnaire was administered to 277 male and 228 female university students. The questionnaire consisted of items regarding knowledge about bone metabolism, and frequency of food intake.
A significantly higher percentage of female students knew that “the life-style disease like osteoporosis could prevent by improvement of diet” compared to that of male students (p<0.001). The percentage of students who knew that calcium is one of the most important nutrients for bone metabolism was 95.0% for males and 98.2% for females, while only 14.0% of male and 18.2% of female knew that vitamin K is related to bone metabolism.
We compared the frequency of food intake and divided the students by whether they were concerned about eating as much calcium-containing foods as they could. 36.7% of male and 50.0% of female were concerned about eating calcium-containing foods, while 61.5% of male and 46.9% of female were not concerned about that. For males, the frequencies of consuming milk, yoghurt, and other vegetables were significantly higher in students who were concerned about eating calcium-containing foods. For females, the frequencies of consuming milk, yoghurt, green vegetables, and non-green vegetables were significantly higher.
Our findings suggest that the positive attitude for a calcium intake is important for the increase of calcium-containing food intake frequency.
