Nutrition & Food Sciences

Diabetes is one of the chronic disease affecting Saudi population. Non-medical field college students have limited information about health and science area. The purpose of this study is to investigate the level of awareness among non-diabetes female students on the diabetes and examine its association with dietary habit. Private universities in the city of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia have been targeted to recruit female students with high socioeconomic status. 141 female students participated in the study; their knowledge level have been assessed by answering short test about diabetes information. Dietary habit and related anthropometric measurements were measured. Study’s participants have good background of diabetic disease (average test score was 11.4 out of 15) specially in the disease symptoms and some of the protective factors, however they are weak in the pathological details of the disease. The majority of the students (77.3%) understand the protective factors of eating fruit and vegetables, however they are far away from the recommendation intake and were not significantly associated with diabetes awareness score. The majority of participants reported a limited consumption of fried or fat-foods and sugary drinks, ranging between never to a few times per week (73.4% and 68.8%, respectively). The mean knowledge of DM at the different frequencies of sugary drink intakes was significantly different (F=2.97; p-value=0.014). Scheffe test revealed no statistically significant difference between the groups, where all the significant levels were greater than 0.05. Further medical and healthy educational sessions such as the pathology of the diabetes disease, healthy eating habit seminars and workshops are recommended to increase non-medical field student’s awareness. This also may apply to other type of epidemiological disease since non- medical field students have limited access of information about health and disease.