Nutritional knowledge and practices followed by rural women: An exploratory study

Abstract

Nutrition is an important element that influences the quality of human life. Knowledge of nutrition is one of the factors that shape the nutritional behavior of individuals as well as communities. Women are generally responsible for food selection and preparation and the care and feeding of the family. They are the key to food security for their household food practices. The study was undertaken to assess the nutritional knowledge and practices followed of rural women with the sample size of 500 respondents. The respondents were selected randomly. Data was collected using survey method in five villages namely Kalkeri, Kumbarkoppa, Belur, Dubbanamaradi and Kogilgire of Dharwad district of Karnataka, India. Findings of the study revealed that 62.00 per cent of the rural women belonged to the age group of 20-40 years. Nearly one third of the rural women were involved in agriculture, almost half of the rural women belonged to lower middle socio economic status (51.80%) to upper middle socio economic status (47.80%). The 30.60 per cent had moderate nutritional knowledge and 17.80 had medium level of nutritional practices among rural women. Highly significant relationship was observed between age, education, occupation, socio economic status and knowledge among rural women. Highly significant relationship between income, education, occupation and nutritional practices among rural women. The rural women had shown highly significant correlation between nutritional knowledge and nutritional practices. Independent variables age, income, education, occupation, socio economic status of the rural women significantly influenced the knowledge and practices. It is recommended that diverse technical support and comprehensive nutritional extension programs such as demonstrations, training programs and group discussions may be implemented by different organizations in order to increase women's knowledge and practices.