Nutrition habits of students living in Malatya province center and ongoing to high school

Nutrition Habits of Students Living in Malatya Province Center and Ongoing To Hıgh School Aim: Our study aims to determine nutrition habits of students and as a parallel to this, it aims to take precautions. The main purpose of the research is: To determine which foods are consumed by students frequently, to determine the nutritional behaviour of students related with general and fastfood foods, to determine percentile value ranges of students and to examine the relationships between these features and nutritional behaviors. Material and method: Our research is a cross-sectional type research which is made in the period including 2017 January-June months. Permission has been obtained from the ethics committee and from National Education Directorate in order to be able to do our study. The data were evaluated with square analysis. The population of study consists of 1040 individuals. In the power analysis which is made, the sample size in the range of 80% power and in the range of 95% confidence was calculated as 281 people. Our study was conducted with 371 students who accepted the survey study. Results: 54.2% of the students who participated in the research are 15 years old. The study was carried with students aged between 15-18. The main meal that students have at least skipped is evening meal. The most skipped main meal was identified as breakfast with 40.2%. When looking at the reason of the skipping meal, 46.8% of the participants skipped meal due to appetite loss. The most consumed foods among the students were identified ad pastry and toast. For the question about the reason of purchasing the foods sold in the open markets, 70.8 % of the 236 students who answered the question stated that they buy these foods just because they want to buy them .Although the frequency of students consuming fast food is low, the frequency of students going to fast food restourants has increased significantly according to the increase of monthly average income of their families .(p=0.001).İt was determined that 22.1% students who participated in the research were low weight and 8.9 % students who participated were overweight .. Conclusion: İt was determined that the foods which students consume frequently are carbohydrate -weighted. Also ,it was determined that students did not feed on food containing protein .When looking at the percentile classification ,it was determined that the percentage of low weight students is high . Key Words: Nutrition in adolescence, nutritional elements, eating habits, obesity, fastfood.