Relationship between health literacy and unhealthy eating behavior of junior middle school students in rural areas of Jiangxi Province / 中国学校卫生

ABSTRACT

Objective@#To understand the relationship between health literacy and unhealthy eating behavior of junior middle school students in rural areas of Jiangxi Province, and to provide a reference for specific strategies for healthy eating behavior.@*Methods@#Stratified cluster random sampling was used to investigate the health literacy and unhealthy eating behavior of 4 311 students in grades 7 to 8 from 50 middle schools in rural areas of Jiangxi Province, the relationship between health literacy and unhealthy eating behavior was analyzed by Chi square test and Logistic regression.@*Results@#Health literacy of junior middle school students in rural areas (≥58 points) was 18.21%. Prevalence of unhealthy eating behavior was relatively high, among which irregular three meal time was the highest (62.33%), followed by high consumption of sugar sweetened beverage, insufficient dairy products consumption, breakfast skipping ever day and insufficient consumption of fruits and vegetables, accounting for 54.60%, 50.38 %, 36.23% and 19.53%, respectively. The risk of irregular meal time ( OR =1.35, 95% CI =1.11-1.65), breakfast skipping every day ( OR = 1.23 , 95% CI =1.01-1.49), insufficient dairy products consumption ( OR =1.29, 95% CI =1.07-1.55), insufficient consumption of fruits and vegetables ( OR =1.45, 95% CI =1.10-1.92) and high consumption of sugar sweetened beverage ( OR =1.39, 95% CI = 1.15 -1.68) was higher than students with high health literacy ( P <0.05).@*Conclusion@#There is a correlation between health literacy and unhealthy eating behavior of junior middle school students in rural areas of Jiangxi Province, schools, families, governments and relevant departments can improve the health literacy level of junior high school students to improve their unhealthy eating behavior, so as to improve the health status of junior high school students.