Assessment Of Knowledge, Attitudes, And Practices on Healthy Dietary Practices Among Sports Students

Abstract

Adequate food is the most important requisite for growth; while it is important throughout the children, it is more crucial during the early years of life when rapid growth occurs. Thus, dietary intake, nutritional status, emotional maturity, and physical fitness are major determinants of physical performance. Objective: To assess the Knowledge, Attitude, and Practices of healthy dietary practices among sports students. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 100 sports students from the University of Lahore sports complex teams using a non-probability convenient sampling technique. Structured questionnaire surveys were personally given to them to collect the data related to their knowledge, attitude, and practices. Data were analyzed with the help of SPSS version 24.0. Results: According to our results, 75.2% of the participants had good knowledge about healthy dietary choices, 64.4% of them had a good attitude towards opting for the right meal, while the practices of the participants were relatively low as about 57.4% of them were practicing their knowledge. Conclusions: It was determined that the majority of the sports students had adequate healthy dietary knowledge and healthy eating attitude, but there were inadequate healthy dietary practices among sports students. Most of them had normal healthy BMI, including both gender, but there were inadequate nutritional practices among sports students. Most students were eating out, taking unhealthy snacks, carbonated beverages and caffeine. Moreover, the consumption of water among the students was also affected.