Dietary Habits among Undergraduate Medical Students in Tamil Nadu; A Before and After Intervention Study

Introduction: In a developing country like India, people suffer from poverty and hunger on one hand and other lifestyle related diseases on the other hand. Unhealthy lifestyle is especially common among affluent society. Non communicable diseases has a multifactorial causation and key modifiable risk factor for NCDs is obesity. Adolescent population tends to suffer from ill effects of obesity because of unhealthy eating habits and social factor like stress. This study aims to evaluate the life style pattern especially eating habits among undergraduate medical students and possible outcome of interventional program in the form of health education.

Methods: A Before and After Intervention study was conducted among 100 undergraduate medical students in a private medical college of Tamil Nadu. Universal sampling method was used to select the study participants. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data from the study participants and Mc Nemar chi-square test was used for analysis.

Results: The Percentage of students who were overweight was 23% and obese was 5%. It was estimated that 94% of the participants had habit of consuming outside food before intervention and when enquired about the frequency 13% consumed daily, 48% consumed twice or thrice per week, 28% monthly once and 11% had rare consumption of outside food. Mc Nemar test was done to compare consumption of healthy food among study participants before and after intervention and this association was found to be statistically significant.

Conclusion: This study concluded that consumption of healthy food among study participants before and after intervention improved and association was statistically significant.