NUTRITION LITERACY AT MOTHERS WHO HAS CHILDREN BETWEEN THE AGES OF 3-6

Abstract

Nutrients such as proteins, fat, carbohydrates, minerals, vitamins and water are needed for the functions of the cells that make up the body, growth and development, and for the maintenance of health. These nutrients are called nutrition for daily intake through consumed foods. Early childhood nutrition experiences have an important influence on the future life of the individual. Children's eating habits cannot be considered separately from parental attitudes, behaviors and habits. For this reason, consciousness of the family is important in the healthy nutrition process. Literacy is a condition that plays an important role in the formation of eating habits. The integration of nutrition knowledge and literacy forms the notion of nutrition literacy and can help increase the control of individual eating behaviors and the formation of a healthy lifestyle. Nutrition literacy can be defined as having the capacity to acquire, process and understand basic nutrition knowledge. General screening model was used in the study to determine the nutritional literacy levels of the mothers who has 3-6 years old children. The study group of the research consisted of 381 mothers living in the province of Konya, who has children aged between 3-6 years. This study was conducted between December-2017 and January-2018 with the aim of identifying nutritional literacy levels for mothers of children aged 3-6 years. The data collection tool was the "Nutrition Literacy Assessment Tool for Adults" and the "Personal Information Form" covering the socio-demographic characteristics of the participants. The "Nutrition Literacy Assessment Tool for Adults" is composed of 35 items and has 5 subgroups. Subgroups are; general nutrition information, reading comprehension and interpretation, food groups, portion size and food label reading. Each subgroup can be used independently. In the evaluation of the data, SPSS package program was used, sociodemographic characteristics were given as frequency tables, necessary statistical analyzes were made, One-Way Anova and Tukey HSD Test were used. According to the results of the research, it is seen that nearly half of the mothers (47.8%) are between 30-35 years of age. 50.9% of the children are girls and 49.1% of the children are boys. The average age of the children is 2.97 ± 0.89 years. Half of the mothers (50.1%) has undergraduate and graduate degrees and 59.3% were housewives. In the study, the general reliability coefficient of the "Nutrition Literacy Assessment Tool for Adults" scale was α = 0.73; the reliability coefficients of general nutrition information, reading comprehension and interpretation, food groups, portion size and food label reading subscales were calculated as α = 0.69, α = 0.71, α = 0.63, α = 0.7 and α = 0.68 respectively. When the analysis results were examined, it was determined that the variables of mother occupation, monthly income, family type and mother education level were significantly different (p <0.05) on total nutrition literacy scores.