The relationship between nutritional literacy and obesity of women applying to the nutrition counseling center

This study was carried out with 385 women who applied to the Healthy Nutrition and Obesity Counseling Unit of Istanbul Bahçelievler District Health Directorate in order to reveal whether the level of nutritional literacy in women has a relationship with obesity. As a data collection tool, "Descriptive Information Form" was used in the first stage and "Evalutaion Instrument of Nutrition Literacy On Adults" was used in the second stage. The questionnaires were applied using face to face interview technique. The collected data were analyzed using the SPSS 22.0 program. The significance level for all statistics was accepted as p˂0.05. The average age of the women participating in the study is 36 ± 10.10 years. The average body weight of women was found to be 72.2 ± 14.24 kg, and 38.2% were found to be mildly obese and 29.4% as obese. According to the BMI classification, the average age of the underweight / normal (32.09 ± 8.98 years) and mildly obese (38.44 ± 9.99 years) and obese (39.60 ± 9.68 years) The average age of normal ones is significantly lower (p˂0.001). According to the BMI classification, the ratio of being underweight / normal was found to be significantly higher in singles, people with high school and university education, civil servants, those who do not have a diagnosed disease, and those who do regular sports (p˂0,001). The mean score of the participants from the EINLA is 26.78 ± 4.13, and it was found that 78.7% of the women had adequate nutrition literacy and 21.3% had borderline nutrition literacy. The mean age of those with sufficient nutritional literacy (36.01 ± 10.30 years) was found to be significantly lower than the average age of those who were borderline / insufficient (39.94 ± 8.89 years) (p˂0.001). The proportion of those with sufficient nutritional literacy was found to be significantly higher among singles, people with university or higher education, and civil servants (p˂0,001). It was found that the obesity rates of those with borderline / insufficient nutritional literacy were significantly higher and the nutritional literacy level decreased as the obesity rate increased (p˂0,001). At the same time, the average BMI of those with sufficient nutritional literacy (26.8 kg / m²) was found to be significantly lower than the average BMI (29.6 kg / m²) of those who were borderline / insufficient (p˂0.001). Since the people who cook at home or decide on food to be bought in the Turkish society are mostly women, it is thought that organizing training programs to further improve the nutritional literacy of women and develop their inadequacies will be beneficial.