Dietary Views and Habits of Health Professional (HPD) vs. Non-Health (NHPD) Students

Nova Southeastern University, Davie, Florida, USA

Objective. To test if HPD students practice healthier nutrition than non-HPD (NHPD) students. Background. The National-Research-Council sets a minimum of 25-hours of nutrition-education to inform future physicians on healthy eating. Studies question how effective this program is. Methods. A 16 question survey was created and distributed to students in HPD and NHPD programs. Questions targeted student eating habits and their thoughts about healthy food choices. Each question had five options and was worth at most 10 points. Quantification was based on assigning 2 points for the “least-nutritionally-good” choice, 10 points for “most-nutritionally-good” choice and in-between values in 2-point steps. Higher scores were better. Results. Of 732 responses (569 HPD-163 NHPD), distributions were; 73.1% female, 50.8% Caucasian, 22.8% Hispanic, 7.7% African-American, 7.6% Asian, 6.0% Asian-Indian, and 5.1% other ethnicities. Results showed no significant HPD-NHPD difference (p> 0.05) in any parameter including consumption of sweets, fast food, red meat, caffeine, water, fruit, vegetables but there were gender differences. Expressed as mean±SD, females scored higher (better) than males in red meat consumption (7.34±1.9 vs. 5.96±2.0, p