Nutritional and Oral Hygiene Knowledge versus Reported Behavior of Children and Adolescents—A Cross-Sectional Interview-Based Study

Madline P. Gund (), Carola Unshelm, Matthias Hannig and Stefan Rupf
Additional contact information
Madline P. Gund: Clinic of Operative Dentistry, Periodontology and Preventive Dentistry, Saarland University, D-66421 Homburg, Germany
Carola Unshelm: Clinic of Operative Dentistry, Periodontology and Preventive Dentistry, Saarland University, D-66421 Homburg, Germany
Matthias Hannig: Clinic of Operative Dentistry, Periodontology and Preventive Dentistry, Saarland University, D-66421 Homburg, Germany
Stefan Rupf: Clinic of Operative Dentistry, Periodontology and Preventive Dentistry, Saarland University, D-66421 Homburg, Germany

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 16, 1-9

Abstract: Despite the fact that healthy, sugar-reduced nutrition has been propagated by the media and in schools for years, dental caries in children remains a major health problem worldwide, caused primarily by an unhealthy diet. The objective of this study is to compare statements on nutrition and hygienic knowledge with those on children’s actual dietary and hygienic behavior. A random sample of 554 children and adolescents aged 3–19 years was enrolled. Designed as a cross-sectional interview-based community survey, this study was conducted consecutively during three one-day public science-promoting events at the Saarland University’s Medical Faculty. Participants’ oral hygiene and nutritional knowledge was profound; however, the reported translation into practice showed deficiencies. Boys and younger children (3–10 years) often showed better oral hygiene knowledge than girls and older children (over 11 years) but had problems implementing it into their daily life practice. In contrast, girls and older children often showed less oral hygiene knowledge but reported more favorable behavior. Finally, children up to the mixed dentition phase preferred drinking sweets more often than older children, posing a risk to the developing permanent dentition. Intensifying well-known controlled motivation training approaches to encourage children and adolescents is recommended to put their knowledge into practice.

Keywords: dental caries; obesity; overweight; nutritional knowledge; nutritional behavior; healthy nutrition; oral hygiene; oral hygiene knowledge; oral hygiene behavior (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/16/10055/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/16/10055/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:16:p:10055-:d:888336

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().