Published Paper Details:

BACKGROUND: Lifestyle is particularly important at any age, but it is built during childhood and adolescence. Building a healthy lifestyle, regardless of age, will have numerous health benefits, being proven that it reduces the risk of non-communicable diseases. Junk foods are energy-dense foods with high sugar/fat/salt content and low nutrient value in terms of proteins, fibres, vitamins, and mineral content, hence proper education on healthy lifestyle and faulty dietary practices and its complication is necessary. METHODS: 100 IT professionals under the age group of 21-40 were selected from Coimbatore district for the study using purposive sampling method. Among them 30 professionals were selected as an experimental group using random sampling. A framed questionnaire was used for pre-assessment to assess their nutritional knowledge. Later nutrition education was given to IT professionals by using booklet and presentation (PPt) for the experimental group. After 1week post-assessment was done to analyze the impact of their nutritional knowledge. RESULTS: In the study, the result shows that 27% of IT professionals consume junk foods on daily basis and 20% of IT professionals consume junk foods weekly twice. In pre-assessment IT professionals has 54% knowledge about healthy lifestyle and dietary practices. In post assessment the knowledge gained was 96%. Hence, 42% of nutritional knowledge has been gained by the IT professionals through education. CONCLUSION: Nutrition knowledge is an integral component of health literacy and as low health literacy is associated with poor health outcomes, adequate knowledge about nutrition has to be imparted to people to lead a healthy lifestyle.