ASSESSMENT OF NUTRITION RISK KNOWLEDGE AND ITS RELATIONSHIP TO THE DIETARY PRACTICES OF ADOLESCENTS

Knowledge of four dietary factors associated with cardiovascular (CVD) disease (cholesterol, saturated fat, total fat, and sodium) was asses sed and compared with cardiovascular dietary quality in 600 randomly s elected public high school students in South Carolina. Based on dietar y analyses, students' diets were evaluated and placed in either a ''lo w risk'' (LRD) diet category or a ''high risk'' (HRD) diet category. I t was hypothesized that students who were assigned to the LRD diet cat egory would score significantly higher on the knowledge test than woul d the students in the HRD diet category and that the knowledge test sc ores would have significant relationships to cholesterol intake, sodiu m intake, and total fat intake; however, no significant relationships between knowledge scores and CVD diet quality were found. Physiologic knowledge of sodium was significantly associated with sodium intake (p < .0001), but other dietary knowledge scores were not associated with dietary intake as measured in the study. A gender/race effect was obs erved (p < .0001) and was determined to be due to the low caloric inta ke of white females, which placed a significantly higher proportion of this group in the LPD diet category. It was concluded that the total amount of food consumed was the most significant factor in predicting cardiovascular dietary quality and that knowledge of the health effect s of sodium has been effectively diffused to this study population.