Awareness of Nutrient Intake Adequacy in Adult Women

Abstract

LEARNING OUTCOME: To identify the predictors of accurate knowledge of nutrient adequacy in adult women. Several nutrients are of particular concern for adult women (calcium, iron, and fiber) and are often consumed in inadequate amounts. Education efforts aimed at increasing intake often fail. One of the reasons for this failure may be that women are unaware that their intake is inadequate. Adult women who responded with two days of dietary intake information in the Continuing Survey of Food Intake of Individuals (CSFII) were studied to determine their level of adequacy for these three nutrients, their knowledge regarding the adequacy of their intake of each nutrient, and to identify predictors of accurate knowledge. 918 women were used in these analyses . Reported intake was frequently less than the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) with 80.5% of the sample reporting less than the RDA for Calcium, 62% less than the RDA for Iron, and 94.5% reporting less than the current recommendation for fiber. For Calcium, 52.5% of the women inaccurately described the adequacy of their intake, while Iron was inaccurately described by 62% and fiber was inaccurately described by 63.3%. Logistic regressions were run predicting accurate knowledge with race, age, income, use of food labels, use of food stamps, and the interactions between food stamps and age and education. Significant predictors were age (higher age equaling less accuracy; p=.004); race (African-American race equaling less accuracy; p=.05); and food stamps (use equaling less accuracy; p=.03). There were also significant interactions between use of food stamps and age (p=.003) and education (p=p=.018) such that older and less educated women were less accurate. These findings will be discussed as they relate to efforts to educate women as to what comprises a healthy dietary intake.