The student’s attitude and belief towards the fast-foods: a survey among students at kurdistan university of medical sciences in 2015

Introduction: One manifest of life style changes is the excess consumption of fast foods which has several adverse effects on general health of individuals. Due to students’ circumstances, the use of fast foods among students is common. The aim of this study was to determine how common is the use of fast foods among students at kurdistan university of medical sciences and the investigate the potential relationship between attitude, normative and control beliefs with consumption of fast foods. Methods: This study was a cross-sectional study by which 401 students of kurdistan university of medical sciences were selected using two-stage cluster sampling. A multivariate and analysis of variance followed by univariate ANOVA were used to determine the relationship between attitude, normative and control beliefs. Results: The multivariate results showed a significant relationship between response variables attitude, normative and control beliefs and gender at 5% level (p=0.005) and grade at 10% level (p=0.053). Post-hoc univariate ANOVA showed a strong significant relationship between gender and normative beliefs (p=0.004) as well as gender and control beliefs (p=0.03) only. The relationship between attitude and gender wasn’t statistically significant (p=0.61). Conclusion: Since 60.54% of students consume fast foods, an educational intervention is recommended to emphasis the negative consequences of the excess use of fast foods.