A research about university students nutrition habits: A sample of Sakarya University

In recently, the world has been continuing to change and to develop. This situation may cause both negative and positive changings. One of the most important of them is consumption behaviors. In parallel, one of the most changings has been seen on the nutrition habits depending on the changings in the world.. Among these people, university students is one of the main groups of people who change nutrition habits. The reasons such as starting to a new life away from their family, socio-cultural changes in their life, irregular sleep, inadequacy about cooking ability or habit, not having enough time, social group and an environmental differences change this groups' nutrition habits. Based on those reasons, university students take nourishment unhealthy and unbalanced. Students generally have their foods from restaurants, fast-food restaurants and school canteens. So, they also don't care of getting their meals on times. The main purpose of this study is to identify the nutrition habits and preferences of university students. In this study, sufficient and balanced nutrition of university students, skipping the main meal and snacks and the reasons of them have been investigated. Additionally, frequency on consumptions about food and beverages that have consumed by students are the purposes of this study. In order to get those purposes, it has applied to quantitative research methods. A formulated questionnaire has been used to collect data. 610 questionnaires have been collected and analyzed by using frequency and discrimination test. As a consequence, it has obtained that university students don't have sufficient and balanced nutrition. Many of them skip main meals and snacks. Most of the students preference "Bread" to consume, "Offal" is the least choice of them. As a beverage preference data has shown that "Tea" is the most common beverage while "Ferment-alcohol beverage" is the less. Additionally, the habits of food and beverage consump-tions have changed via differences in students demographic situations. Keywords: Nutrition, Nutrition Habits , University Students, Meal Patterns