Eating awareness and obesity attitudes in nursing and HEALTH sciences students

Aim: This study was planned to determine the eating awareness and obesity attitudes of students studying at a foundation university in Istanbul, a school of nursing and a faculty of health sciences (nutrition and dietetics, physiotherapy and midwifery departments). Materials and Methods: The study was carried out with students studying at the faculty of nursing and health sciences in the 2021-2022 academic year. The population of this study consists of students studying at the Faculty of Health Sciences (Nutrition and Dietetics, Midwifery and Physiotherapy departments) and the School of Nursing (N=918). The sample group consisted of students (n=224) who were randomly selected by stratified sampling method and accepted the research. Findings: In this study, health sciences and nursing students; It has been interpreted how eating awareness and obesity attitudes are. Eating awareness scale, mindless eating, emotional eating, eating control, mindfulness, conscious eating and interference sub-dimensions did not differ significantly between school groups; In the eating discipline sub-dimension, it was observed that the eating discipline scores of the health sciences faculty students were higher than those of the nursing school students (p = 0.008 <0.05). There was no significant difference between school groups in the sub-dimensions of health belief model, importance of health, perception of seriousness, perception of sensitivity and perception of benefit in obesity (p> 0.05); It was observed that the disability perception scores of the nursing college students were higher than those of the health sciences faculty students (p=0.007<0.05). Conclusion: This study was planned to determine the eating awareness and obesity attitude of university students and will contribute to healthy nutrition strategies to be developed for this population. Keywords: Eating Awareness, Obesity, Healthy eating