Nutritional Knowledge, Attitudes, and Needs Among Community Residents of Beijing: A Cross Sectional Study

Community health education is essential in combating obesity and cardiovascular diseases by addressing nutritional knowledge gaps and promoting healthier dietary habits in China. The aim of this study was to investigate the nutritional knowledge, attitudes, and needs of residents at Beijing Fengtai District.

This cross-sectional study was conducted between October 2021 and January 2022, residents from 31 communities of the Fengtai District were given an online questionnaire, which was designed to assess their nutritional knowledge, attitudes, and needs.

From 420 distributed surveys, a total of 416 participants were enrolled for an effective recovery rate of 99.05%. Among them, 317 participants (76.20%) scored 80% or higher on the nutritional knowledge questionnaire, participants with higher nutritional knowledge scores were more likely to be aged over 60 years (OR = 0.21, 95% CI 0.06-0.76, p = 0.02), female (OR = 0.40, 95% CI 0.22-0.73, p < 0.01) and employed (OR = 2.31, 95% CI 1.04-5.12, p = 0.04). While many community residents expressed a desire to receive guidance on dietary guidance (n = 303, 72.84%) dietary matching (n = 303, 72.84%), and preventive health care (n = 286, 68.75%). Residents were familiar with nutritional care clinics (55.05%) and believed that the nutritional care clinics should be increased (59.86%). In addition, 345 residents (83.41%) wanted nutritional care clinics to provide consultation on nutritious meal planning.

Beijing residents need additional access to clinical nutritional resources as their needs are not fulfilled despite a relatively strong knowledge of nutrition.