A Study of Fast Foods Consumption Attitude among Secondary High School Students, Ardakan, Yazd, Iran

Healthy and nutritional habits are formed and consolidated during adolescence. So this research has been done in Ardakan-Yazd province on high school students' attitude to fast food use. In this cross-sectional descriptive study, 200 students have been chosen by stratified sampling method and the data was collected by a questionnaire which approved its reliability and validity. All the descriptive data has been analyzed by SPSS 16 software through Chi-square experiment and ANOVA tests. The results of the experiment determined that 55% of the students were female, and 93% were single. The students' BMI was as follow: 22% thin (BMI< 18.5) 56% normal (18.5≤ BMI< 25) 14.5% overweight (25≤ BMI< 30) 6.5% fat (obese) (BMI ≥30).The female has a positive attitude to fast foods (P= 0.03). The mean attitude score for eating fast food in 17-18 years old group was more than 15-16 years old students (P= 0.001). The mean attitude score also showed that the single students were more eager to eat fast foods than the married students (P= 0.001) Most of the people who use fast foods are low educated, teenagers, youth and singles. On the other hand, social media like TV and radio and family has a significant effect on correct nutritional habits. So improving family's attitudes and educating students and teachers by social media can help in transferring data to the students and their teachers.