Investigation of dietary habits and health conditions of the commissioned officers and sailors during escort

Abstract

Objective To investigate dietary habits, behavior and health conditions of the commissioned officers and sailors and the problems concerning food safety during escort. Methods An investigation on the 50 officers and sailors of a certain naval unit once on escort mission was made by using questionnaire survey. Results Most officers and sailors had healthy dietary and behavior habits, and were in good health conditions. The main problems existed among them were: imbalanced diet, inadequate intake of bean products (12.5%), dairy products (4.2%), eggs (10.4%), animal food (4.2%), animal innards (29.2%), aquatic products (31.3%), fruits (18.8%) due to one reason or another. 6.3% of them almost never take part in any physical exercises, 10.4% had only 4-6 hours of sleep per day, and only 10.4.% of them took vitamin pills everyday. 56.3% of officers and sailors had doubts about the safety of meat products, and 75.0% of them worried about food quality due to expiration of food shelf life. Conclusions Survey results indicated that education on dietary nutrition and health knowledge should be strengthened, food safety supervision should be further intensified and dietary surveys should be carried out in depth, so as to give them better advice on proper diet and health life, and to ensure perfect fulfillment of escort missions. Key words: Escort; Dietary habit; Health condition; Behavior; Food safety