Document Type : Original Article
Author
Faculty of agriculture. Cairo University
Abstract
This study was conducted to assess the level of nutritional knowledge, diet-health related beliefs and practices among 80 women chosen at random from two different socioeconomic levels. Unhealthy food habits which are considered one of the leading causes of important health and nutritional problems, knowledge about healthy and unhealthy food was also assessed by a questionnaire. Data were also recorded about education, income, percentage of monthly income spent for food, healthy and unhealthy food score, food and drink choices, obesity and the level of physical activity and exercise.
Nutrition as well as healthy awareness score was measured by principal component analysis of 20 questions' responses. The survey also assessed if the studied women know the relation between bad habits, unhealthy food, under activity, and the risk of some diseases (hypertension, cancer, cardiovascular disease CVD, lack of immunity, diabetes, and obesity).
The results indicated that the majority of families in high socioeconomic group (HSS) had both higher education and income, therefore spent less percentage of their income for food compared with families in low socioeconomic group (LSS).It is worse to mention that many unhealthy food habits were detected only in LSS as 72.5% from such group were using newspaper for fried foods and 87.5% were putting foods in black plastic bags, some other habits were extremely high in LSS such as using oil when smoked as well as consuming high quantity of fried foods, pickles, fat especially from animal sources, and carbonated beverages. Results showed that higher education level promotes more healthy food and drink choices as well as high level of awareness as the percentage of mothers classified as high in awareness (score more than 55) were in HSS as triple as those from LSS, moreover 52.5% from mothers in LSS had low degree of awareness (score 35-<45) compared to only 10% in HSS. Of the socioeconomic variables the income as well as education level had a great influence in food and drink choices which affected particularly healthy food score, eating breakfast as 80% in HSS used to eat breakfast regularly while 60% in LSS used either to skip or seldom eat breakfast .The level of education also affected sweets and jam daily consumption, and the level of activity and exercises (which have a great impact on weight gain and obesity which contribute to many diseases) as results showed that 100 % from children in HSS exercised versus less than one fourth (22.5%)in LSS. Education in addition to income were act as an effect modifier on health habits, practices and believes, hence when we assessed women’s knowledge about the relation between bad habits, unhealthy food and the risk of some diseases, 55% from mothers in HSS were get correct answer compared to only 22.5% in LSS .With respect to knowledge resources, results showed that TV have attained the highest percentage of recourses in both groups. Results also showed the close association between nutritional knowledge, health awareness and the level of education as Mann Whitney showed highly significant difference between the two groups in educational status, income, bad habits, while a significant relation was found in the degree of awareness and the knowledge about the relation between unhealthy food, bad habits and some chronic diseases.
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