Objective To understand the situation on public nutrition knowledge, attitude, and practice of the college canteen staff, and to evaluate the effects of a nutritional health promotion model using healthy canteen as the carrier.
Methods By random cluster sampling, 62 canteen staff from a pilot college running a healthy canteen project in Changzhou were selected as the intervention group in 2012; another 62 canteen staff from a college without taking any intervention measures were selected as the control group. All the staff completed a baseline and an after-one-year questionnaire about knowledge, attitude, and practice on public nutrition. The differences in the results of the two questionnaires were presented as the effect of the intervention program.
Results At the baseline, the intervention group and the control group reported 31.09% and 33.87%, 65.48% and 68.06%, 5.48% and 9.03% for the awareness rate of public nutrition, positive attitude rate towards public nutrition, and positive behavior formation rate, respectively; no significant difference was identified in all these three indices (all P > 0.05). After the intervention program, the above three rates in the intervention group significantly increased to 71.86%, 96.77%, and 91.29% (all P<0.05). Moreover, the intervention group at the end of the intervention program presented higher rates of knowledge, attitude, and practice than the control group did (all P<0.05). No significant differences in all indices between before and after the intervention program were found in the control group (all P > 0.05).
Conclusion It is an effective method to promote nutrition health by establishing healthy college canteens.
DownLoad: