Analysis of the Current Situation and Influencing Factors of Dietary-Culture-Related Nutrition Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices of Chinese Netizens: A cross-sectional Study

Abstract

Background Dietary culture affects people's cognition and attitudes toward nutrition, and it even dictates people's dietary behavior. This study aimed to assess the dietary-culture-related KAP of Chinese netizens during the corona virus disease 2019(COVID-19) pandemic. Methods A cross-sectional survey was conducted using an online KAP questionnaire in China. Volunteers were recruited at Southwest Medical University and were first trained to unify standards of distributing questionnaires. Participants were recruited by convenient- and snowball-sampling methods. Multiple regression analysis was used to analyze the influential factors. Results After 50 days of investigation, 3514 participants (40.6% men) were valid. The mean score of netizens’ nutrition knowledge was 3.9 ± 2.2 and the mean awareness rate was 31.7%. Women participants in the age group of 30–39 with higher education level had higher nutrition knowledge qualification rate. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the positive rate of attitude toward dietary-culture-related nutrition was 93.7%, and women netizens who had higher level of education and immigrated from other places had better attitudes. Moreover, the positive rate of dietary habits was 90.7%, and older women netizens had better dietary behavior. Conclusions Netizens’ knowledge of nutrition was poor, but their dietary habits and attitudes toward dietary-culture-related nutrition were generally positive, which was also a great progress for Chinese people.