The Relationship between the Nutrition Habits, Body Mass Indexes and Academic Successes of the Health School Students

Objective: This research was conducted to examine the relationship between university students' nutritional habits, body mass indexes and academic achievements. Method: The study was conducted with 213 students studying at a health college in a private university. Socio-demographic characteristics, height and weights and eating habits were asked in the questionnaire applied to students who volunteered with the informed volunteer consent form. The academic success of the students was evaluated with the year-end weighted grade point average (AGNO). Results: More than half of the students (51,2%) participated in the research were students of the Department of Nutrition and Dietetics. The majority of students (69,5%) are among the normal values in the Body Mass Index (BMI) classification. 35,7% of students think that they always eat healthy and 49,3% sometimes eat healthy. 87,8% of the students stated that they skipped main meals, while 60,6% stated that they skipped lunch most frequently. 27,2% of students always consume snacks and 65,7% sometimes consumes snacks. The academic success of the students who not skipped the snack food was statistically higher (p <0,05). It has been determined that there is a significant difference between the academic success of the students according to the state of thinking that they are eating healthy. It was found that the academic achievement of students who were thought that they were eating healthy was higher than the others (p <0,05). It was found that there was a significant negative correlation between students' body mass indexes and academic achievement (r = -,178; p = 0,009). Conclusion: A relationship between students' nutritional habits and academic success were found in our study. In order to raise healthy, productive and successful generations, more importance should be given to nutrition in adolescence life.Because ,the nutritional habits will continue in adult period. Nutrition trainings and lessons may be useful for this purpose. Keywords: Nutrition, Body Mass Index, Student, Academic Success