Effect of Fact-to-Face Education on Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices toward Traffic Light Food Labelling

Emerging Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) with premature mortality are one of the major concerns in health supervising organizations of the world. High intake of energy, salt, sugar, fat, and trans fatty acids are introduced as dietary risk factors of NCDs. The status of food risk factors is presented in Traffic Light (TL) food labeling through colors of red, yellow and green as the signs of stop , wait and watch and go , respectively. TL education can result in choosing healthier food. This stepwise interventional study examined the impact of a face to face educational sessions on knowledge, attitudes and practices of 637 respondents toward TL food labelling through a self-administered and structured questionnaire. Paired t-test or alternatively wilcoxon test was used to evaluate the influence of education in total scores of knowledge, attitudes and practices in test-retest. Results indicated that before education, the average of the scores for the knowledge, attitude and practice was 1.003±0.69, 10.97±1.86 and 1.60±1.84, respectively. After education, the scores were increased to 8.72±3.11, 15.95±2.64 and 8.42±1.69. Significant difference in the scores of the respondents were observed before and after education (p<0.05). This study revealed that the intervention of education had positive effect on the knowledge, attitudes and practices of the studied population. General awareness about the food risk factors of NCDs was existed but special effort is required to make public TL and label information usage as an actual guidance for every food item in Iran.

کلیدواژه ها:

Non-Communicable Diseases ، Traffic Light ، Food Labelling ، Education