The relationship between cognition of school dietary policy and environment and dietary behaviior among college students in Taiwan

[[abstract]]The purpose of the study was to assess the relationship between cognition of school dietary policy and environment and dietary behavior among college students in Taiwan. The subjects were selected from freshmen, sophomores, and junior college students of a business school at Miaoli. Data was collected by a structured questionnaire. Six hundred sixty nine students (95.7% response rate) provided valid data. One-way ANOVA, Pearson correlation, and multiple regression analysis were used to analyze the data. The important results were listed as follows: 1.The subjects performed normal dietary behavior. Eating breakfast was the best and the fruit consumption was the worst. 2.The subjects were not familiar with school dietary policy. 3.The subjects recognized school dietary environment well. However, they knew negative school dietary environment better than positive school dietary environment. 4.The subjects perceived that support for good dietary behavior from peers and school faculty was low. 5.The cognitions of school dietary policy, positive school dietary environment, school social dietary environment were positively associated with dietary behavior. However, the cognition of negative school dietary environment is negatively associated with dietary behavior. 6.The background factors, the cognitions of school dietary policy and environment could explain dietary behavior with 23% variance. The influential factors was school social dietary environment of best friends. We recommend that school increasing fruit and milk consumption behavior and decreasing negative school dietary environment.