Knowledge, Attitude, Behavior and Practices on Salt and Snack Consumption and Determination of Average Daily Salt Intake of Families of Selected Undergraduate Students in a Sri Lankan University

Abstract

High salt intake leads to health issues, including hypertension and cardiovascular diseases and the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends the daily salt intake for adults to be less than 2,000 mg of sodium, equivalent to 5 g of salt per day.  The objective of this study was to find out the average daily salt intake among undergraduate students and their families in a selected Sri Lankan university. Further, the study assessed the knowledge, attitude, practices, and behavior related to salt and snack consumption among the selected population. An online based questionnaire was used to collect data, and 24-hour recall was used to estimate the average daily salt intake. Majority of the respondents were females (71.1%). The average daily salt intake per person per day was 7.59±2.17g in the tested population. Even though this was more than the recommended value, it was lower than the previous studies indicating a potential decrease in salt consumption, implying the success of the salt reduction programmes implemented. According to the survey, 55.7% of respondents were not aware of the Recommended Daily Value (RDV) for salt and 75.3% of respondents were not aware of the amount of salt in the food.  Around 14.1% of respondents believed that they consume the right amount of salt as recommended by WHO. Moreover, 90.4% of respondents were aware of the adverse health effects of high salt consumption. Among the respondents, 75.8% believed that their health was good, and 65.1% believed that they were trying to have a healthy diet in their day-to-day lives. Determined salt content exceeded the label value in all the analyzed snacks indicating label violation. The survey showed that 51% of respondents consumed salty snacks every day for the taste and 76.8% of respondents were not aware of healthy snacks.

KEYWORDS: Health problems, Recommended value, 24-recall, Nutritional awareness, Fast food consumption