Nutrition label knowledge among culinary and health students in Indonesia

Abstract

Many students in the world believed that the nutrition label was too difficult to understand. There is no previous research on nutrition label knowledge among Indonesian students in the field of health and culinary. This study was aimed to evaluate nutritional label knowledge among culinary and health students in Indonesia. A total of 252 students were recruited from 62 universities in Indonesia. The selection was carried out using the cluster sampling method. Sample respondents were asked to answer a validated nutrition label knowledge questionnaire. Nutrition label knowledge differences among culinary and health students were analyzed using Fisher exact tests. The percentage of wrong answers was mostly in questions about food ingredients containing high protein and fibre. The second and third most wrong answer was on the number of carbohydrates and fat consumed when consuming 2 servings. The total number of health students that answered incorrectly were significantly greater than culinary students on whether or not one serving of packaged processed products can meet daily nutrition need. The majority of the culinary and health students contributed correctly to the nutrients expected to be included on the nutrition label. The food nutrition label knowledge score for students in the culinary field is 5.40 and was categorized as good, whereas, the score in the health sector was 4.90 (moderately good). Health students need to get additional education about food nutrition labels.