Nutritional literacy status and its related factors in students of Yasuj University of Medical Sciences

Introduction: it is necessary to evaluate the level of nutritional literacy before performing any educational measurement related to nutrition. As a matter of fact, an effective education is the result of proportional education level with the level of understanding the target group. This study is aimed to determine nutritional literacy status. Objectives: In this study, students of Yasuj University of Medical Sciences were considered as research sample set. Then, factors affecting the nutritional literacy status were designed and implemented for the study. Methods: A total of 397 students were selected for this descriptive-analytical study. A systematic sampling method was developed and nutritional literacy status was assessed through a localized questionnaire based on the Evaluation Instrument of Nutrition literacy on Adults (EINLA). SPSS Statistics 23 software package was employed for statistical analysis. Results: In this study, students participated in 11 disciplines with the mean and standard deviation of 22.04 +/- 2.33 years. The results showed that the mean score of students' nutritional literacy was 24.9 out of 35. According to the results, 1% of students were dealt with the problem of inadequate nutritional literacy and 50.9% and 48.12% of students had borderline nutritional literacy and adequate nutritional literacy, respectively. In addition, the results revealed that higher semester students had more nutritional literacy than other students. Furthermore, nutritional literacy was significantly correlated with the semester, field of study, students' residence and body mass index (P<0.05). Conclusion: The results demonstrated that most of the students had borderline and sufficient nutritional literacy, but they had a significant weakness in determining their nutritional needs and portions.