Organised By
Organised By
Department of Nutrition and Dietetics, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Serdang.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: The National Health & Morbidity Survey in 2015 showed that 11.7-12.1% of Malaysian young adults were obese. The objective of this study was to determine associations between personal and social norms of food portion sizes and eating behaviour with BMI among university students in Universiti Putra Malaysia, Serdang.
METHODOLOGY: This was a cross-sectional study among a total of 300 students recruited using multistage sampling method. Self-reported questionnaires were given, while weight (kg) and height (cm) were measured to estimate the BMI then after.
RESULTS: A total of 67 males and 233 females participated in this study with a mean age of 21.66 ± 1.52 years. The prevalence of students being underweight, lean, overweight and obese were 16.7%, 65%, 12% and 6.3%, respectively. There was significant difference in BMI between males (23.10 ± 4.02) and females (21.74 ± 4.71) students (t=2.145, p<0.05). Eating behaviour particularly uncontrolled eating (r=0.156, p<0.01) and restraint eating (r=0.138, p<0.05) were found to be positively correlated with BMI, while no correlation was found between personal norm (r=0.006, p>0.05) and social norm (r=-0.057, p>0.05) with BMI.
CONCLUSION: The positive correlations between eating behaviours and BMI suggesting for more dietary counselling focusing on unhealthy eating behaviours among university students.
Keywords- Eating behaviour, personal norm, social norm
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