Sudrita Roy Choudhury¹*, Joyeta Ghosh², Samarpita Koner¹, Khusboo Singh¹ and Neelanjana Basu¹

¹Research Scholar, Department of Dietetics and Nutrition, NSHM Knowledge Campus-Kolkata, West Bengal, India
²Assistant Professor, Department of Dietetics and Nutrition, NSHM Knowledge Campus-Kolkata, West Bengal, India

*Corresponding Author: Sudrita Roy Choudhury, Research Scholar, Department of Dietetics and Nutrition, NSHM Knowledge Campus-Kolkata, West Bengal, India.

Received: August 12, 2022; Published: September 16, 2022

Abstract

According to The Asian College of Journalism (ACJ) India has more than 600 million active internet users in 2021. Overall, 52% of the population depends on online media, including social media for news, 59% on TV, 50% on print and 63% on social media like Facebook and WhatsApp. In the present era, all the important decision-making approaches in nutrition science mostly depend on current available scientific evidence. Translation of scientific evidence to nutrition communication and marketing involves a number of challenges. As at present we are living in a time where plentiful information is available, yet sometimes causes miscommunication. Media does not give authentic information all the time and the population who are mostly affected are younger people. They tend to get influenced by the dietary information mostly. The objective of the present study was to find out the association between media influence and dietary practices and also to find out the current nutritional status of the respondent. The study was an observational descriptive study based on a pretested standardized questionnaire. This study included both males and females of a specific age group of 20-25 years. The location of the study was Kolkata, West Bengal with a sample size of 101. Alarmingly 94% of the respondents agreed that they see advertisement in the media, among them 62.1% were overweight or obese. It was observed that most of them get highly influenced by sports personalities followed by celebrities, it might be because they relate the sports celebrities more with fitness. From a health point of view there is a huge indulgence in processed foods, ready to eat foods and even junk foods. The advertisement and knowledge shared by the media need to be moderated by the administration and the companies need to further broaden their research so that the youth won’t be affected by false information. Proper nutrition education to the masses is also another challenge, faced by the Indian food market. To mark the growing challenges in protecting India from pseudoscience, practitioners, nutrition researchers and policy makers should work together to ensure efficiency and relevant collection of nutrition information.

Keywords: Media; young adults; Diet patterns; Health behavior

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Citation

Citation: Sudrita Roy Choudhury., et al. “Media Influence on Dietary Practices Among Young Adults of Kolkata". Acta Scientific Nutritional Health 6.10 (2022): 09-15.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2022 Sudrita Roy Choudhury., et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.