Students’ knowledge, attitude, and practice regarding healthy and safe food in Hormozgan University of Medical Sciences

Introduction Food safety and health have an important role in protecting human health and preventing diseases. This study was conducted to evaluate the Students’ knowledge, attitude, and practice regarding healthy and safe food in Hormozgan University of Medical Sciences.

The present descriptive-analytical study was conducted on 220 students at Hormozgan University of medical sciences who were selected through the simple randomized sampling method. The data collection instrument was a questionnaire comprised of items concerning demographic information, evaluation of knowledge, attitude, and practice of the students regarding healthy and safe food. Data were analyzed using SPSS ver.19 software and appropriate statistical methods.

The results showed that 8.2% of the subjects had a high level of knowledge, 75% had an average-level of knowledge, and 16.8% had a low level of knowledge. Moreover, 6.8% of the students had a negative attitude, whereas 73.6% had a neutral and 19.5% had a positive attitude towards safe and healthy food. The practice score was low in 11.8% of cases while it was average in 60.9% of the students and high in 27.3% of them. A statistically significant difference was found between gender and attitude (P-Value=0.002) and practice (P-Value <0.001). Moreover, in terms of knowledge, attitude, and practice, a significant difference was observed among the students of different faculties (P-Value˂.05). knowledge showed to be correlated with educational level (P-Value<0.001) and passing the nutrition course (P-Value=.038)

According to the results of this study and the observed significant relationship between knowledge and educational level and passing educational courses related to food safety, implementing appropriate educational interventions can be effective in promoting knowledge and changing attitudes, and improving students' practice regarding the healthy and safe food.