The association between nutrition knowledge and eating behavior in male and female adolescents in the US

Some factors that could influence adolescent eating behavior include: peer influences, nutrition knowledge and beliefs, mass media, and parental dietary habits. The purpose of this study was to examine the correlation of nutrition knowledge and eating behavior of a sample of middle school children. The participants were 532 students in the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades between the ages of 11 and 13 from Shawnee Middle School in Lima, Ohio. The students were asked to answer a questionnaire, CANKAP (Comprehensive Assessment of Nutrition Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices), which measured their nutrition knowledge and eating behavior. The CANKAP questionnaire consisted of 30 questions for sixth-grade students and 35 questions for seventh and eighth-grade students. Also, the participants were asked to identify their gender. The findings indicated that females had higher mean nutrition knowledge scores than boys in the seventh and eighth grades. There was no correlation between nutrition knowledge and food choices in the sixth-grade male or female students. However, there was a correlation between nutrition knowledge and food choices for girls in the seventh and eighth grades. In addition there was a correlation between nutrition knowledge and food choices for boys in the seventh and eighth grades.