PREVALENCE OF DIETARY SUPPLEMENT INTAKE AND ITS ASSOCIATED FACTORS AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS
Abstract
People have been widely exposed to the importance of supplement through the media presence. Many people, especially young adults those with hectic schedules, will substitute the missing nutrient in their diet with dietary supplement. Based on the current research, supplement intake may occasionally be uncontrolled without any supervisory and may affect the consumers’ health. Besides, there are ample evidences on the fact that dietary supplements have been used without any consultation from the medical professionals and people are unaware of its side effects. With that, the aim of this paper is to determine the associated factor that influence students’ decision to have dietary supplement in their daily intake. The participants’ for this study were bachelor degree students in three (3) local university in Terengganu, namely Universiti Teknologi MARA, Terengganu Campus, Universiti Malaysia Terengganu and Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin. Data were obtained through online questionnaire. Among the 406 respondents, 126 (30.9%) were currently using dietary supplements. The prevalence of dietary supplement use did not differ significantly between males and female. However, it decreased according to their Body Mass Index and it was higher in non-associated science students compared to science associated students. The most used sources of information are internet and the most popular places to obtain their supplement were pharmacy and drugstore. Furthermore, the main objective of dietary supplement consumption is for maintaining their health level and most of them consumed only one supplement. Results of this study extend and provide additional information to the existing research by extending the area of study and beneficial to the supplement industry especially in Terengganu. However, future research in this area is recommended to expand to other area and population in Malaysia. Therefore, supplement’s consumption among university students is still controllable.
