Introduction: Healthy nutrition is fundamental to preventing and managing obesity, as dietary patterns directly influence energy balance, metabolic health, and adipose tissue accumulation. In particular, excessive consumption of unhealthy fats is a major contributor to the development of obesity. Making healthy dietary choices is largely dependent on an individual's understanding of nutrition. The present study aimed to assess the level of nutritional knowledge and its relationship with fat consumption among students at Maragheh university of medical sciences.
Methods: The current cross-sectional study was conducted on 108 university students aged 18-26 years, in Maragheh University of Medical Sciences. Demographic characteristics, anthropometric indices, physical activity level, and nutritional knowledge were collected via face-to-face interview.
Results: Based on body mass index (BMI), the majority of the students were normal (55.1%) or overweight (34.6%). The mean nutritional knowledge of the population was 59.46 ± 10.66. Accordingly, the majority of the students had moderate to high nutritional knowledge. Additionally, significant differences in protein and cholesterol intake between male and female students were observed. Assessing the association between dietary intake and nutritional knowledge adjusted for age, gender and BMI, exhibited significant associations for BMI and energy, fat, protein, carbohydrate, and saturated fatty acid intake.
Conclusion: Given the findings that students exhibited good nutritional knowledge and acceptable fat intake yet still faced a moderate prevalence of overweight, future studies should focus on bridging the gap between knowledge and practice through targeted interventions.