The Knowledge About "Nutrition During Pregnancy", the Eating Habits and the Affecting Factors in the Pregnant Women

Aim: Failure to daily supplementary feeding in according with the growing needs, economic impossibilities, nutritional imbalances caused by false beliefs, wrong practices in food preparartion and safekeeping are the basic causes of the feding problems during pregnancy in our country. In our study are investigated the factors affecting the behaviors and the level of knowledge about nutrition during pregnancy. Material and Method: Our study is a descriptive study whose universe is costituted of 409 pregnant women in 4 month period. The questionnare consist of 3 parts. The first part aimed to identify the demographic characteristics of the participants, the second part aimed to determine information about nutrition during pregnancy and the third part aimed to identify attitudes and behaviors. Scores of knowledge of the pregnant women about nutrition were calculated out of 100 and were compared to demographic data. Results: The average age was 27.39 +/- 4.57, the age of first birth was 23.80 +/- 3.43, the age at first marriage was 22.02 +/- 3.11. 75.8% of the pregnant women were housewives and 78.2% of the pregnant women were high school graduatesand over. The levels of knowledge of nutrition in pregnant women were calculated as 69.10 +/- 14.37. The levels of knowledge of nutrition in primery school graduates according to high school and higher graduates were found statistically significantly lower (p<0.005). It was found a corelation between the knowledge score about nutrition during pregnancy and the age at first marriage which was in positive direction, midlevel (r=0.254) and statistically significant. Discussion: It was evaluated that there is a need to develop adequate and balanced diet especially for the group with low education.