Knowledge, attitude and practices of university students regarding the use of nutritional information and food labels

• Published in: Asian Journal of Clinical Nutrition
• Main Author: Nurliyana G.; Norazmir M.N.; Khairil Anuar M.I.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Asian Network for Scientific Information 2011
• Online Access: https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84858316847&doi=10.3923%2fajcn.2011.79.91&partnerID=40&md5=b81c132f982e1ed4e5968f160a1e124c

The food nutrition label provides the nutrition information that helps consumers on food choices and used to give us information so that customer can choose between foods. This study was aimed to determine the association between knowledge, attitude and practices on food label use and to determine the factors that influence the use of food labels during making food purchasing decision among university students. A cross-sectional study of undergraduate students at UiTM Puncak Alam in the Kuala Selangor district of Malaysia was conducted in June until July 2011. Three hundred twenty nine students (n = 329) volunteered to complete a Food Label Use Questionnaire (FLUQ) which included question about sociodemographics, level of knowledge about food and nutrition, attitude and practices related to using food labels and factors affecting the use of food labelling. Hypothesis testing was completed using Independent t-test, Pearson chi-square and descriptive analysis in which the statistical significant level was set at ct = 0.05. The results show that, only 21.6% of the students "often" use the food label during food purchasing decision. These study shows that the practices by read the nutrition information were significantly associated with the use of food label (p<0.05). The important aspect during buying food product was expiry date (98.5%), taste (95.7%), price (92.4%) and nutrient content (90.5%) were significantly associated with the use of food label. The students attitude which is do not know how to use nutritional information label (p = 0.028) and label was not attractive (p = 0.037) were significantly associated on food label use. © 2011 Asian Network for Scientific Information.