Assessment of Nutritional Knowledge towards Eating Behavior and Food Choices of High School Female Students in Jakarta during Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The social isolation regulations done during COVID-19 pandemic created a new lifestyle which is prone to sedentary. This new lifestyle is concerning as it may disrupt the nutritional status of individuals especially to adolescents. Adolescence is one of the most critical periods in life to achieve adequate nutritional requirements for growth. To allow appropriate nutritional status, adequate nutritional knowledge should be mastered as contributes to the eating behavior and food choice priorities. The objective of this study was to assess the nutritional knowledge and its source, food choice and eating behavior of 15-19 years old high school female in Jakarta by using an online questionnaire. The mean score of nutritional knowledge was 71.4% with 17.2% of respondents being categorized as having good nutritional knowledge level. Health workers were found to be the most influential in the nutritional knowledge adequacy of respondents (4.43 ± 0.80) and source of knowledge was found to be associated to the nutritional knowledge level of respondents. Health was found to be the highest priority and convenience to be the least in food choice. Fried foods was consumed most while skips breakfast to be the least done by the respondents as their eating behavior frequency. The association between nutritional knowledge to food choice was found to be statistically significant while the association between nutritional knowledge to eating behavior only shows significant difference in the category of skipping breakfast, snacking and sweet beverage consumption frequency. The association between demography characteristics towards source of knowledge, eating behavior and food choice also showed associations.