Awareness of health hazards of fast food among the school going children

Abstract

Fast food culture is an emerging trend among the younger generation. The ready availability, taste, low cost, marketing strategies and peer pressure make them popular with children. The street food and fast food trade is a growing sector in many developing countries today. The consumption of fast food is very popular among the children and is associated with negative effect on health of the individual. The present study was undertaken to study awareness of health hazards of fast foods, and association of consumption of fast foods with overweight among school going children. A self-structured questionnaire was used to collect the information of the student. It contained the information on general profile, nutritional knowledge, fast food frequency and fast food preferences questions on frequency of intake of fast foods, vegetables and fruits per week, source of information, reasons for consumption, and awareness about its health hazards among the selected participants. The association between the awareness of ill effects of consumption of Fast Foods and the perception to control its consumption among the respondents was found to be statistically significant (?2= 8.96, p value= .00276 for girls and ?2=17.34, p value= .000031 for boys).The association between fast food consumption and body mass index of the respondents was insignificant (p value=.6855, 0.2794 for girls and boys respectively).