Stages of Dairy Products Consumption Change by Medical Students: The Trans Theoretical Model

In spite of the reverse relationship between Dairy products consumption and chronic diseases, the university students do not consume enough amounts of dairy products. Success interventions for changing dairy consumption patterns need to determine its stages of change. Determining medical students’ readiness to change the dairy consumption pattern through stages of change was the aim of this study. For this descriptive analytical cross-sectional study, 404 medical students were selected by random clustered sampling. The food frequency and stages of change questionnaires were used to get data. The relationship between age, sex, body mass index, settlement situation, marriage situation and educational STATUS with dairy consumption stages of change were analyzed by chi-2, Kruskal-wallis, Spearman correlation and logistic regression. Less than 50% of students (40% females and 46% males) consumed enough servings of dairy products daily. The servings of dairy consumption had not relation with sex, marriage or settlement status, age and body mass index. The least number of students (12.6%) were in precontemplation and 26% in contemplation, 18.8% in preparation, and 24.8 and 17.8% in action and maintenance stages. While there was relationship between educational status and stages of change, such a relation had not been found between other variables and stages of change. The percent of internship students in action and maintenance stages were greater than students in medical basic sciences (OR=1.7). Regards to students’ inadequate amount and inappropriate kind of dairy products consumption and readiness to change dairy consumption in about half of students, it seems necessary to apply appropriate intervention strategies on the basis of stages of change to correct dairy consumption patterns.