Parents' knowledge and attitudes of healthy eating regarding children diets among UMT staff

Abstract

Healthy eating in children is important to prevent child nutritional health problem such as undemutrition, growth retardation, obesity, type-2 diabetes and coronary heart disease that are categorized as a long term health problems among children. Other than that, parents can be a role model and as the first counselor to them in selecting or providing nutritious food or meal to support the growth constantly and it should initially begin at home. The purpose of this study is to determine the parents knowledge and attitude of healthy eating regardingchildren diets, investigating the most significant factors influencing healthy eating amongchildren, examining relationship between parents overall attitude towards healthy eating and children diet and also relationship with children BMI. This study used the questionnaire that is modified from Diet Health Knowledge Survey (DHKS), Food Pyramid recommendation by Ministry of Health Malaysia and other sources.