Nutritional Status and Food Pyramid Knowledge Among Royal Malaysia Police Personnel in Selangor, Malaysia
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3923/pjn.2018.8.14Keywords:
Body mass index, food pyramid knowledge, nutritional status, police officers, royal Malaysia policeAbstract
Background and Objective: Various studies on nutritional status and nutrition knowledge have been widely reported but studies involving royal Malaysia police (RMP) are very limited. The purpose of the study was to evaluate physical characteristics and body composition of RMP personnel, to determine level of food pyramid knowledge and to identify relationship between socio-demographic and physical characteristics with food pyramid knowledge. Materials and Methods: A total of 286 male RMP personnel were randomly selected from a district police headquarter in Selangor. Anthropometric measurements involved height, weight, waist circumference (WC) and body mass index (BMI). Body fat and fat mass were measured using bioelectrical impedance analysis method. Questionnaire was used to assess the food pyramid knowledge. Results: This study showed that 33.6% subjects had normal BMI, 44.4% were overweight and 22.0% were obese. About 50.7% subjects had WC value of 90 cm or more and 78.3% subjects had high body fat. The mean food pyramid knowledge score was 56.8±11.9% corresponding to a moderate level of knowledge. Inverse correlation between food pyramid knowledge with age (r = -0.173, p<0.05) and duration of services (r = -0.160, p<0.05) was reported while positive correlation was observed between food pyramid knowledge and BMI (r = 0.124, p<0.05). Conclusion: Majority of the RMP personnel were having high BMI, high WC and high body fat percentage. Level of food pyramid knowledge was moderate among the RMP personnel. Nutritional education and fitness program should be incorporated in the RMP to optimize their health and knowledge.
References
Tomblin, L., 2002. Health trends in a Canadian police force. M.Sc. Thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada.
IHME., 2017. Obese and obesity data show. Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. http://www.healthdata.org/news-release/nearly-one-third-world%E2%80%99s-population-obese-or-overweight-new-data-show.
Yusoff, M.F.M., 2015. National Health and Mobidity Survey (NHMS) 2015. Global Database Fact Sheet. http://www.iku.gov.my/index.php/research-eng/list-of-research-eng/iku-eng/nhms-eng/nhms-2015.
Kee, C.C., H. Jamaiyah, M.N.N. Safiza, A. Geeta and G.L. Khor et al., 2008. Abdominal obesity in Malaysian adults: National health and morbidity survey III (NHMS III, 2006). Malay. J. Nutr., 14: 125-135.
WHO., 2008. Waist circumference and waist-hip ratio. Report of a WHO Expert Consultation, Geneva, 8-11 December 2008. World Health Organization, Geneva.
Nadiy, I., S. Razalee, M.K. Zalifah and M.J. Zulkeffeli, 2013. Nutritional status and random blood glucose, cholesterol and triglyceride test among Malaysian army (MA) personnel in Kuala Lumpur. AIP Conf. Proc., 1571: 660-668.
Kullen, C.J., L. Iredale, T. Prvan and H.T. O'Connor, 2016. Evaluation of general nutrition knowledge in Australian military personnel. J. Acad. Nutr. Dietetics, 116: 251-258.
Wardle, J., K. Parmenter and J. Waller, 2000. Nutrition knowledge and food intake. Appetite, 34: 269-275.
Aaron, M.F., 2014. Police lifestyles related to cardiovascular disease. M.A. Thesis, Western Illinois University, USA.
Yahia, N., C.A. Brown, M. Rapley and M. Chung, 2016. Level of nutrition knowledge and its association with fat consumption among college students. BMC Public Health, Vol. 16.
Krejcie, R.V. and D.W. Morgan, 1970. Determining sample size for research activities. Educ. Psychol. Meas., 30: 607-610.
Gliem, J.A. and R.R. Gliem, 2003. Calculating, interpreting and reporting Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficient for likert-type scales. Proceedings of the Midwest Research-to-Practice Conference in Adult, Continuing and Community Education, October 8-10, 2003, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH., USA., pp: 82-88.
Sedek, R., P.B. Koon and M.I. Noor, 2013. Pengetahuan pemakanan dan pengambilan suplemen dalam kalangan anggota tentera laut diraja Malaysia [Nutrition knowledge and supplements intake among Royal Malaysian Navy personnel]. Sains Malaysiana, 42: 1181-1190, (In Malay).
WHO., 2016. Global database on body mass index. World Health Organization. http://www.who.int/bmi/index.jsp?introPage=intro_3.html.
Fatma, C.K. and S. Behsat, 2012. Nutrition knowledge levels of police officers (An example study). Procedia-Social Behav. Sci., 47: 1232-1236.
Sedek, R., P.B. Koon and I.M. Noor, 2010. Body mass index and body composition among Royal Malaysian navy personnel. J. Defence Secur., Vol. 1, No. 1.
Nor, A.R., S. Razalee and H.T. Arnida, 2016. Body mass index and body composition among rescue firefighters personnel in Selangor, Malaysia. AIP Conf. Proc., Vol. 1784.
Worsley, A., 2002. Nutrition knowledge and food consumption: Can nutrition knowledge change food behaviour? Asia Pac. J. Clin. Nutr., 11: S579-S585.
Cluss, P.A., L. Ewing, W.C. King, E.C. Reis, J.L. Dodd and B. Penner, 2013. Nutrition knowledge of low-income parents of obese children. Transl. Behav. Med., 3: 218-225.
Thakur, N. and F. D'Amico, 1999. Relationship of nutrition knowledge and obesity in adolescence. Fam. Med., 31: 122-127.
Emrich, T.E. and M.J. Mazier, 2009. Impact of nutrition education on university student's fat consumption. Can. J. Diet Pract. Res., 70: 187-192.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2018 The Author(s)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
