Survey of Breakfast Behaviors and Its Nutritional Qualities in Primary Students in Long Quan-yi District of Chengdu

Objective To investigate the breakfast behaviors and nutritional quality in primary students in Long Quan-yi District of Chengdu, and to provide scientific evidence for developing nutrition education in primary schools. Methods During April to July 2012, a total of 8139 primary students were recruited by Random clustering sampling method. A questionnaire survey was used to collect their breakfast behavior information, and to evaluate breakfast nutritional quality among 8139 primary students from Long Quan-yi District of Chengdu. Results In this study, effective recovery rate of research questionnaire was 97.63%(7946/8139). among 7946 primary students, the rate of having breakfast 5-7 times a week was 67.7%, there had no significance difference between girls and boys in weekly breakfast frequency and proportion(χ2=6.505, P=0.089); mother prepare breakfast rate was 47.2%; having breakfast at home rate was 79.4%; rate of poor nutritional quality in breakfast was 80.6%, and there also had no significance difference between girls and boys(χ2=5.646, P>0.05). Conclusions Primary students are one of the focal target people for preventing unhealthy dietary behaviors due to shortcomings of eating breakfast. It is necessary to improve the nutritional quality of breakfast for better health of primary students. Key words: breakfast behaviors; nutritional quality; primary students