Assessment of awareness, knowledge levels and consumer perception of students of health high school towards functional foods

This study was designed to evaluate consumer perception of students, who were studying in Bitlis Eren University School of Health, regarding functional foods. Study population consisted of 480 students who were attending to Bitlis Eren University School of Health. Of these 74.6% (n = 358) were participated to the study. A Likert-type scale, which was developed by Kopuz (2011) regarding the consumer perception on functional foods, consists of 18 items and is scored between 1-5, was used. 72.1% of the students had no knowledge about functional foods and 69.3% wanted to be informed about functional foods. 30.3% of the students consumed functional food. When the mean score and standard deviations of the 4 subscales for functional foods were examined, the perception regarding the effect on health was 3.204± 0.651, consumption perception was 3.365± 0.643, necessity of use and product prestige perception was 2.600± 0.634, physical quality perception was 3.616±0.644. While the participants’ physical quality perception on functional products was observed as “I agree”, their perceptions on the effect on health, consumption and necessity of use and product prestige perception were observed as “Undecided” or in other words neither positive nor negative. According to the results of this study, it was observed that the necessity of use and product prestige perception status of the students studying in the school of health about the functional foods was at undecided level.