The hygienic characteristic of medical students’nutrition

Abstract

Introduction. Nutrition is a very important part of the field of population general health, including students. Learning the characteristics, factors, measures of nutrition by the student leads to a significant improvement of the status of healthy person among the students, as well as of all the people. Materials and methods. It was used a questionnaire of 16 questions related to food. The questionnaire was sent to 100 USMF students of each year. 31 men and 69 women participated.Results. The result of the survey, the analysis of diagrams and graphs show that healthy nutrition is mostly neglected: 68% of students do not have a well-defined and balanced diet. Using BMI, it was found that 72% are part of normal weight category, 9% - underweight category, 14% - overweight category, 4% - 1st stage of obesity, 1% - 2nd stage of obesity. An alarming find is the fact that students tend to eat during the night: 58% prefer to eat once or twice per night. Also, it is impossible not to notice an inclination for vegetarian diet: 13% of participant are vegetarians and 87% have a mixed nutrition. The results are less positive when it comes to students’ favorite food: 70% of students consider that their food is suitable for consumption, 39% prefer high fat food, 29% prefer sweets, 17% go for spicy food and 14% prefer salted food. Conclusions. This study showed that 68% of the students do not have a balanced diet considering type of nutrition, body mass index and having a schedule to eat at fixed hours. In conclusion, based on the factors mentioned above, a series of measures need to be taken in order to improve the quality of food ration, by motivating students, and to avoid the appearance of pathologies related to food consumption.