The Effect Of Dietary Knowledge On Chinese Adults Body Mass Index

Abstract

Publishing dietary guideline and conveying dietary knowledge to the public through mass education are world wide used to alleviate overweight and obese problem. However, previous researches in developed countries have showed that dietary knowledge has limited effect on preventing obesity. This study uses China as an example, aims to examine whether dietary knowledge can prevent overweight and obese problem in developing countries. An ordinary least squares econometric regression model is used to invest demographic, socioeconomic, dietary knowledge, life styles, and food and physical activity preferences predictors of BMI in Chinese adults from the 2004 Chinese Health Nutrition Survey. The result shows that dietary knowledge does not associate with BMI, whereas demographic factors, occupation, income, lifestyles of being a smoker, drinking alcohol and preferring in watching T.V. are highly associated with BMI. The impacts of preference in salty snacks, sugared beverage and light activity although statistically significant, are not going to the direction we expect. This study presents that the overweight and obese problem will get worse in the future. Chinese government should pay more attention on this issue. Preventive education of delivering dietary knowledge to public although not effective is still a channel worth to use if we think education as a long term shifting in attitude development and adjustment about dietary.