Investigating the Relationship Between Nutritional Knowledge and Microbiota Awareness: A Cross-Sectional Study Among University Students

Aim: This study aims to evaluate the relationship between nutritional knowledge and microbiota awareness among students at Istanbul Bilgi University. Material and Methods: The sample of this cross-sectional study consists of 415 university students. The general characteristics of the participants were obtained through a questionnaire, while their nutritional knowledge and microbiota awareness were assessed using the Nutrition Knowledge Level Scale for Adults and the Microbiota Awareness Scale, respectively. Results: The students had a mean age of 22.6±4.29 years, and a median BMI of 22.14 [5.13] kg/m². Median scores were 51 [11] for NKLSA-NK, 38 [9] for NKLSA-FP, and 69 [15] for microbiota awareness. There was a statistically significant positive correlation between nutritional knowledge and microbiota awareness (r=0.658; p<0.001). Age also showed a statistically significant positive correlation with nutritional knowledge, particularly with food preferences (r=0.131; p<0.05). Statistically significant negative correlations were found between BMI and both nutritional knowledge (r=- 0.192) and microbiota awareness (r=-0.191), as well as between body weight and both variables (r=-0.242 and r=-0.274, respectively; p<0.001). Conclusion: Our results show that the study population has fair nutritional knowledge in the NKLSA-NK and good nutritional knowledge in the NKLSA-FP sub-section, alongside a good level of microbiota awareness. The Education, lifestyle choices, and guidance are important for nutritional knowledge and microbiota awareness of the population. To our knowledge, this is the first study examining the relationship between nutritional knowledge level and microbiota awareness scores, and further studies are needed.