Do Dutch nutrition and dietetics students meet nutritional requirements during education?

Abstract

Objectives: To compare the dietary intakes of Dutch nutrition and dietetics students with the Dutch RDA and the Dutch National Food Consumption Survey (DNFCS), and to assess whether dietary intake changes during education. Design: Cross-sectional and longitudinal research (2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010). Setting: Data collection by 7 d dietary record and questionnaire. Subjects: Dutch nutrition and dietetics students. Results: Three hundred and fifty-two first-year and 216 fourth-year students were included. One hundred and thirty-three students in three cohorts were assessed twice. Of first-year students, .80 % met the RDA for all macronutrients. Of these students only 37 % met the RDA for fibre and in 43 % intake of saturated fat was too high. Fourth-year students more often met the RDA for fruits (55 %) and vegetables (74 %) compared with first-year students (32 % and 40 %, respectively). Intake of fruits and vegetables of both first-and fourth-year students was much higher than that of DNFCS participants (where 2 % and 7 %, respectively, met the corresponding RDA). Only ,25 % of fourth-year students met the RDA for Fe, Se and vitamin D. In the cohorts, dietary intake for all macronutrients stabilised from the first to the fourth year (.80 %). Intakes of dietary fibre, Ca, Mg, Se, riboflavin, niacin, fruits, vegetables and fish improved significantly during education. Conclusions: Dietary intake of nutrition and dietetics students is much better than that of DNFCS participants and improved during education. However, there is still a gap between actual dietary intake and the RDA, especially for Fe, Se and vitamin D. Keywords Dietary intake Students DietitiansNutritionists and dietitians are advisors and practitioners concerning eating habits, nutritional status and lifestyle in the prevention and treatment of lifestyle-related diseases (1) . They have a broad knowledge of nutrition and diet and are active in all health-care settings. In their professional role, they demonstrate high-level skills in the application of nutritional knowledge and in advising clients how a specific dietetic approach will affect eating behaviour. Furthermore, nutritionists and dietitians act as a role model for personal conduct when dealing with clients (1,2) . Health professionals with a personal healthy lifestyle can positively affect the behaviour of clients by influencing their attitudes and practices. These professionals can better motivate clients during counselling and improve the confidence of these clients on their advice (3,4) . Moreover, health professionals in training with healthy habits, such as medical students, have a positive attitude towards preventive counselling in nutrition (5)(6)(7) .When being educated to become a dietitian, knowledge on nutrition improves during education in nutrition and dietetics (ND) students. However, it is unknown whether this knowledge results in a (more) healthy diet during education and thus contributes to a healthy lifestyle. There is evidence suggesting that the e...

Vegetable Consumption and Factors Associated with Increased Intake among College Students: A Scoping Review of the Last 10 Years

“…Almost 95% of the studies (n = 67) were designed as cross-sectional. The other designs were mixed (cross-sectional and longitudinal) [17], microlongitudinal (21 days) [18], time series analysis [19], and retrospective survey [20].…”

“…Thirty-one studies declared having used questionnaires, adapted or designed specifically for the study purposes [20,24,25,26,28,29,30,31,33,36,38,64,65,66,67,68,69,70,71,72,73,74,75,76,77,78,79,80,81,82,83]. Seven studies used prospective methods for evaluating food consumption [17,18,19,22,39,84,85]. The two studies in New Zealand [18,22] required participants to fill in 21-day food diaries.…”

“…The time series analysis study [22] also evaluated a second sample, which was required to complete a 13-day food diary. Another three studies [17,19,39] employed a 7-day food record, one of them combined with a FFQ [19], and two studies [84,85] a 3-day food record.…”

“…The lowest frequency of compliance with recommendations was found in South Africa, where only 2.5% of participants met the recommendation of 3 portions/day [59], followed by two studies in the USA, in which 7.0% [85] and 12.4% [71] of the participants met the recommended 2.5 cups/day. The highest frequency (74.0%) was found among fourth-year students from the Netherlands (150 g/day) [17], followed by 68.4% for salad/raw vegetable intake (daily or several times a day) in a study in Finland [47]. Associated factors with meeting the relevant recommendations of vegetable intake were being female [46,47,54,79], importance given for eating healthy [47], normal weight [33,68] and less stress [46].…”

Dietary supplement use among dietetics students at the University of KwaZulu-Natal

“…Knowledge on nutrition was found to improve with education among students studying nutrition-related courses (Van der Kruk et al 2013). However, it is not known if this exposure and knowledge on nutrition influenced them to make use of dietary supplements (Van der Kruk et al 2013).…”