Integrating factual nutritional knowledge and healthy eating practice

The concept of nutritional knowledge needs to be analysed in a multidimensional way. Previous approaches have concentrated on measuring specific content domains. This study is a pilot study aiming to test a questionnaire using variables derived from the theoretical basis of a multidimensional approach to nutritional knowledge. A sample of young Finnish mothers (n= 42) was shown to be very health-conscious but still had certain difficulties in integrating factual knowledge and practice. This may imply that if nutritional education ignores practical knowledge and favours factual knowledge, the ordinary homemaker can have difficulties in relating nutritional knowledge to food behaviour.     

The relationship between nutrition knowledge and food behaviour among Finnish homemakers

The purpose of this study was to understand how the different domains of nutrition knowledge are related to health-oriented food behaviour and how both of these are related to socioeconomic factors. The studied population of homemakers (n = 647) answered a mailed questionnaire gathering socioeconomic data, food use data and data on nutrition knowledge. Items measuring both food behaviour and nutrition knowledge were chosen in the areas of fats and dietary energy because of their importance in the Finnish nutrition recommendations. The household context was chosen to increase the understanding of the knowledge-behaviour relationship in everyday settings. The major findings were: nutrition - related beliefs were the best predictors of health-oriented food behaviour (h.o.f.b.); factual knowledge had only weak connections with h.o.f.b.; education and income had stronger connections with h.o.f.b. than factual knowledge; and the connection of practical knowledge oriented with childhood implied that a homemaker's food behaviour was linked with habits adopted from childhood.