Breakfast eating habits and Health-Related behaviors in university students

Abstract

This study's purpose was to research the breakfast eating habits of university students in Cheongju city and to investigate the relationship with health-related behaviors such as exercise, drinking, and BMI. 400 male and female university students were surveyed. Health related behaviors, breakfast eating habits, frequencies, and percentages were obtained and the Chi-square test was used. For Considerations when selecting breakfast menu, the mean value and standard deviation were calculated and the independentsamples t-test was performed for both genders, and all significance was tested at P <0.05 level. 71.6% of the university students said that they do not eat breakfast or eat irregularly, and 63.1% of them eat breakfast twice a week or fewer. There was no significant difference in the distribution of university students’ exercise, number of drinking, degree of smoking, and BMI and breakfast eating, but there was a significant difference between the students’ residence type, night eating, degree of interest in health, and waking time (p<0.05, p<0.001). Particularly, the students who missed breakfast had a high night eating rate, and the morning intake group had a high interest in health. The proportion of skipping breakfast was higher among living alone students. Among the five attributes of taste, hygiene, nutrition, price, and convenience when choosing the breakfast menu, university students regard convenience as the most important factor (3.83 points/5 points). In the importance of consideration in selecting breakfast menu, the average score of the two items of convenience and hygiene was significantly higher for women than for men (p<0.05). There is a need for nutrition education to have attention to health including the importance of breakfast and regular lifestyle, and specific solutions such as a student cafeteria serving breakfast should be considered.