ATTITUDE OF STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION, WINNEBA TOWARDS NUTRITION INFORMATION ON FOOD LABELS

ABSTRACT

The study investigated attitude of students in the University of Education, Winneba towards nutrition information on food labels. The study adopted the cross-sectional survey designand involved344 respondents randomly sampled from a target population of about 15,778 students.Data collection was done by online survey using a questionnaire designed with Google Forms. The study found among other things, that:level of awareness of respondents about nutritional information on food labels was high(68.0%);respondents who were knowledgeable about nutritional information made healthier food choices, implyingthat the use of nutritional information had some significant effects (p=0.01) on food choices;students encountered some difficulties in reading and understanding nutritional information on food labels; demographic characteristics (gender) of respondentsdid not significantly influence food choicesof respondents (p=0.08); there was a negative correlation (-0.642) between levels of awareness about nutritional information and effects of reading nutritional information. However,correlation between level of awareness and difficulties encountered in reading nutritional information was positive (0.555);there was a negative correlation between difficulties encountered and the effects of reading and understanding nutritional information (-0.502).It is recommended that conferences, seminars and symposia be organized on the importance of reading nutritional information; designers of food labels should use legible and readable fonts in designing food labels. It was also suggested that further studies be conducted to compare the attitude of students and workers towards the use of nutritional information for making food choices.