Nutrition
Nutrition plays a crucial role in the maintenance of health of a woman across her life and it has an even more important role during growth, pregnancy, lactation, and menopause.
Nutrition knowledge is low among reproductive-age women. An increase in nutrition knowledge may promote healthy weight loss behaviors. The mean nutrition knowledge score was significantly lower among African American women than whites. Obese women, women with high school enrollment/diploma, and some college hours/degree had higher nutrition knowledge scores than their counterparts. The higher score of nutrition knowledge was significantly associated with higher odds of engaging in healthy weight loss behaviors: eating less, switching to foods with fewer calories, exercising, eating more fruits/vegetables/salads and less sugar/candy/sweets. It was not associated with unhealthy weight loss behaviors, such as using laxatives/diuretics or inducing vomiting.[1]
The Australian Guide to Healthy Eating for pregnancy provides a number of food- and nutrition-related recommendations to assist pregnant women in optimizing their dietary behaviour. The findings of the study about exploring Australian women’s level of nutrition knowledge during pregnancy indicate a lack of knowledge among pregnant women in most of the nutrition knowledge areas. Although knowledge alone cannot ensure dietary behavioural changes, it can be a key factor in the initiation of such changes. The establishment of official dietary guidance is not sufficient to ensure that women are equipped with the knowledge necessary to optimize their diets for the health of themselves and their unborn babies. Health care providers have an important role in promoting knowledge of healthy eating for pregnant women.[2]