Determination of fish consumption preferences of students in Firat University

The aims of this study is to determine the fish consumption habits and preferences of the students studying in different scientific fields at Firat University. This study was collected by face-to-face interview technique as a questionnaire on 950 university students (52.9% men, 47.1% women) in 2017-2018 academic year. The analysis of the obtained data was made through SPSS for Windows 22 software. According to the results of the research, 25.3% of the students were consisted of social sciences, 25.8% of the students in science and engineering, 24.2% of the students in health and 27.4% of the students in education. Students' meat types preferences were 36% chicken meat, 34% red meat, 24% both red meat and white meat, 7% fish. The reason for preferring the fish was 28% of the participants stated that fish meat is important in the nutritious and healthy diet and 16.1% preferred it because of the habit of family. 40.7% of the respondents reported that they consume fish once a month, 19.9% once and twice a week. The ratio of those consuming one or three times a year is 14.6%. It was determined that 34.4% of the participants preferred freshwater fish and 28% preferred sea fish. Fish-lovers prefer primarily fresh water fish, trout with 56.9% and anchovy with 33.3%. It was determined that they preferred the most fish fried (34.8%) as consumption. It was determined that 26.8% of the students preferred canned fish products and 34% of them did not prefer processed fish products. It was determined that the participants paid attention to the freshness (68.9%) when buying fish. It was found that they decided whether they were fresh or not by looking at their gills (33.4%). According to the education groups, 42.5% of the students in social sciences, 34.3% of the students in science and engineering, 44.8% of the students in health field and 41.7% of the students in education were found to consume fish once a month.