Knowledge and consumption of Andean foods in Peruvian university students.

Abstract

Introduction: Knowledge is a process of acquiring valuable information to understand reality through reason and consumption is an essential activity that man develops daily through the selection and preparation of food. It is necessary that Andean foods produced in Peru from ancient times be consumed for their valuable nutritional contribution.

Objective: To identify the relationship between knowledge and consumption of Andean foods in Peruvian university students.

Material and methods: The study was cross-sectional and 408 Peruvian students from public and private universities participated. An instrument of knowledge about Andean foods was designed with 15 items and a frequency of consumption of Andean foods was elaborated with 7 groups of Andean foods. Both instruments were validated with 7 judges and the KR20 of the knowledge instrument was 0.87, while the food consumption questionnaire had a cronbach's alpha of 0.89. The Chi-square test was used between the variables level of knowledge and the consumption of Andean foods.

Results: 75.25% of the students were female and 24.75% were male. The 71.6% presented a regular knowledge of Andean foods. There is a relationship between knowledge and consumption of Andean foods, among them Andean herbs such as llantén, fruit: airampo, alpaca, trout and llama meats, have significant values with p<0.05. Likewise, with some Andean fruits such as tumbo, sancayo, sachatomate, lucuma, guindas and tuna (p<0.05). In addition, Andean tubers and roots, such as mashua and black chuño were also significant. The results are relevant to understand dietary patterns and guide strategies for the promotion of healthy foods in the Peruvian population.

Conclusions: Knowledge of Andean foods in Peruvian university students is related to the consumption of Andean herbs, fruits and tubers.