The impact of nutritional knowledge on students' food choices

There is a dearth of knowledge about the nutritional knowledge of college age students who frequently consume fast food. The purpose of this study was to measure students' nutritional knowledge for fast food items that they regularly consume on campus, and to determine if the provision of nutritional information for these foods would influence their future intentions to consume these foods in the future. A sample of 202 undergraduate college students took a computer delivered survey with an innovative intervention delivery method. Students were invited to participate in the survey if they were undergraduate students who were enrolled in randomly selected classes. In this survey, students were asked to access their nutritional knowledge about a selected fast food item and then after seeing accurate nutritional information for the food item, they were asked about their intentions to consume the food item in the future. Overall, students' nutritional knowledge was low for caloric content and all other nutrients (fat, protein, carbohydrates and sodium). Students who underestimated the caloric content of foods were more likely to change their future purchasing intentions.;Future health promotion efforts should focus on groups that are more likely to underestimate caloric content, which include students who are female, non-white, traditional college age, dieting, and those who are under or normal weight (BMI<25).