FACTORS ASSOCIATED WITH NUTRITION INFORMATION LABEL READING AMONG STUDENTS IN CHULALONGKORN UNIVERSITY

Abstract

The objective of this research was to assess influenced factors related to behavior of reading nutrition information label among undergraduate students in Chulalongkorn University. In this study, 432 students were invited to participate. Proportion to size and simple random sampling was used as sampling method to select participated students. Self-reported questionnaire was accessed students’ knowledge and attitude on nutrition information label including their reading behavior. The study found that most of the participants were male (53.9%) aged between 19-21 years old (73.8%) (mean age 20 years ±1.314). Most of them was studying in second year of bachelor’s degree (38%). For food label around 70% of undergraduate students reported that they always read expiration date before buying food products. However more than 60% of them had fair knowledge and moderate attitude regarding to nutrition information label. Only few of them paid attention of nutrition information label before buying food product while 97.5% of them had poor behavior on reading behavior. This study also found that students’ attitude level on nutrition information label was associated with their reading behavior (fisher exact = 0.01 , p-value < 0.01). In addition, their age was negatively correlated to score of nutrition information reading behavior (r= -0.95 , p-value < 0.05). Finding of this study could be suggested that students should be aware about reading nutrition information. It’s useful for students to choose good products and suitable for themself.