Study of understanding and use of nutrition labels of food products and its determinant in students of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, 2018

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the knowledge, understanding and usage of food labels and its determinants in students of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences in 2018-2019. Materials and Methods: This project is a descriptive study of cross-sectional type. The target population was all medical students of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences. In this study, 240 students were selected. For each of them, a questionnaire related to the demographic characteristics and knowledge and practice related to food labels was completed. To evaluate the understanding of food labeling, two subjective methods (asking respondents "Do you have food labels?") and objective (providing three pairs of hypothetical food labels and asking participants to choose the healthier one) were used. To determine the use of food labeles, a food label model was shown to the participants and they were asked about the use of the nutritional value panel, ingredient list, and serving size information when deciding whether to purchase food. Results: The age range of people between the ages of 20 to 24 years old and most of them were in the age group of 20 to 22 years old. Most of the participants reported that they read the food lables occasionally (34.2%) and only 10.4% reported they alwaya read food lables. The most frequent reason for not reading the food label was "I do not have enough time" (40.8%). 95.3% of respondents stated that attention to food labels was due to observation of production and expiration dates. 77.5% of participants reported that they understood the meaning of food labels to some extent. Of the three labels provided for choosing the healthier one, the correct selection for the first, second and third labels were 90.4%, 70% and 76.2%, respectively. The items which the participants mostly consider edin the choice of Labels were fat, sodium, protein were 95.41%, 65% and 45%, respectively. There was a significant positive relationship between age and the participants’ objective knowledge of the food label. However, there was a significant inverse relationship between age and the correct response to the first and third label selections. This was not the case with the second label. There was no statistically significant difference in the level of understanding of food labels between the two sexes (p=0.177). Also, there was no significant relationship between the level of self-understanding with age, year of entry, and household income (respectively P=0.076, P=0.058 and p=0.471).