Investigation of nutritional knowledge, habits and behaviors and obesity frequency of 7th and 8th grade students studying in two schools with different socioeconomic levels

One of the main risk factors for obesity is the misfeeding practices in childhood. Child nutrition is affected by the socio-economic status, environmental conditions and education provided to the child. The aim of this study is to reveal the nutritional habits, nutritional knowledge levels and the obesity prevalence of the secondary school students from different socioeconomic levels. The study was carried out with 410 volunteer. In order to reveal the nutritional knowledge, 22 questions was prepared. For each correct answer, 1 points and for each wrong answer, 0 points were given to the participants. Students are expected to reach an average of 31.00 points, which corresponds to at least 70.0% correct answer rate, in order to be considered the students as sufficiently knowledgeable. It was determined that 51.2% of the participants are the students in a public school while the 48.8% of them are the students in a private school and 14.1% of all the students were obese. The 22% of the students selected from the private school were found as obese, while the 6,7% of the students chosen from the public school were obese. This fact is statistically meaningful (p<0.001). The 30% of female students in the private school and 2% of female students in the public school was detected as obese and this is also statistically meaningful (p<0.001). There is no statistically significant difference in terms of nutrition education (p=0,126). The success of the students on the nutritional knowledge is found as at the moderate level.