Dietary patterns among students of health sciences and its association with morbidity in a private medical university of coastal Karnataka: a cross-sectional study

Abstract

Background:In general students who get into health sciences experience transition from home and family care to university and hostel life, which in turn exerts lot of stress which affects their dietary pattern. Many life style factors and poor eating habits acquired during this period can lead to serious diseases later in life.Methods:The present study was a questionnaire based cross-sectional study conducted to find out the dietary pattern among the students of health sciences and to know their health and morbidity status.Results:The study included 175 students of Nitte University with 93 Medical, 49 Dental, 33 nursing students. 75% of students who ate outside almost daily had stomach upsets regularly and it was much less (46.8%) among those who had a frequency of not more than once a week. It was seen that 87 (49.71%) students skipped breakfast, 14 (8%) students skipped lunch, 14 (8%) students skipped dinner. 5.7% of subjects were underweight, 85.2% of subjects had a normal BMI and 9.1% were overweight.Conclusions:Hereby we recommend that a nutritional health education intervention aimed at improving the dietary habits of students is the need of the hour.