NUTRITION HABITS AND FOOD CONSUMPTION FREQUENCIES OF MEDICAL

Objective: Medical faculty students may develop irregular eating habits for reasons such as their social – economic situations, adaptation to faculty life, dormitory or their new environment. As a result, some students eventually ignore their basic food requirements and have a diet that is cabohydrate, saturated fat and cholesterol rich. Our aim was to search the nutritional habits and food consumption of medical faculty students in order to provide a healthy diet advice. Material and Method: This study was conducted with the first, fourth and sixth year students of Istanbul University, Medical Faculty in the 2009-2010 academic year. Interview Forms were given to 746 students. They accepted to take part in this study voluntarily and answered the questions under our observation. Interview Forms included a questionnaire with 17 questions and a monthly food consumption frequency form.. Results: It was found that 1/3 of the students did not have three meals a day, almost half of the students had irregular meal times and more than 3/4 of the students had irregular and unhealthy meals. Some of the students had pre-existing health problems so they needed special diets. In all, 5.4 % of the students had food allergies. In addition, the number of meals eaten decreased and irregular eating habits increased with the students ’ academic year progression. The most preferred snacks were found to be chocolate, wafers, cream-cakes, sweet foods, tea, coffee, cake, biscuits, fruit juice, fruit, cola, soda and nuts respectively