The Study in Change of Nutrition Knowledge, Attitude, and Behavior of College Students as Affected by Different Method of Nutrition Education

College students of Food and Beverage Management related disciplines in southern Taiwan were surveyed in order to investigate the influencing factors of students’ nutritional knowledge, behaviors and attitudes. Eight hundred and fifty questionnaires were given with 723 returned and of which 584 were valid. Results showed that the overall percentage of correct answers on nutritional knowledge, attitudes and behaviors were 77.5%, 77.6% and 67.5%, respectively, which indicated that nutritional behaviors possessed by college students’ were on fair ground. The location of institutes and residences, grade, age, academic system, food and beverage related working experiences had no significant effects. Students on metropolitan areas scored higher on nutritional attitudes and behaviors (P<0.001). Students who had taken related courses had better nutritional knowledge, attitudes and behaviors. Female students and professional certificate holders also had higher scores on nutritional knowledge and attitudes. Major sources of nutritional information were mass communication media (50.6%), followed by newspapers and magazines (21.0%), radio and TV (15.2%), while the Internet also received 14.4%. But the influences from schools (24.2%) and families (8.9%) education were decreased. There were positive correlation between nutritional knowledge and attitudes, so as attitudes and behaviors, similar positive relationship between knowledge and behaviors were also identified (p<0.01).