Nutrition knowledge and dietary practices among secondary school students in Hebron- Palestine: a cross-sectional study

Background: School programs are set to effectively inform students about nutrition and healthy body weight to improve their health-related knowledge, which may in turn have a positive impact on students’ dietary behaviors and healthy lifestyle. However, developing an effective nutrition-related education program is conditioned to a prior assessment of students’ nutritional knowledge. Objective: This cross-sectional study aims to examine the levels of obesity-related nutrition knowledge possessed by secondary schools’ students in Hebron and evaluate the association between their nutrition knowledge and dietary practices. Using the stratified random sampling procedures, a total of 469 students, average age of 16±0.671 years, were randomly selected from four different areas in Hebron. A dichotomous questionnaire, consisted of 16 items, was used to investigate the nutrition and obesity knowledge. Data collection included: age, gender, weight classification, parent’s level of education and eating behaviours. The analysis showed low levels of obesity-related knowledge among the study sample, as indicated by the low mean scores of students’ correct answers (9.7±3.3). Significant higher mean scores were found in favor of female students (p<0.05); scientific stream students (p<0.01), with no significant correlations with students' dietary practices. This highlights the need to develop interventional and educational school programs in Palestine. This would increase students' awareness of obesity-related knowledge, and at the same time, promote the idea of a healthy diet and lifestyle to them.