Abstract

Breakfast is often considered to be the most vital meal of the day as it is known to provide energy for the brain and improve learning capabilities. A simple random study was conducted among 403 students on a total of 3 university students in Noakhali district, Bangladesh. The objective of the study was to find the prevalence of breakfast skipping and its associated factors. Data collection was conducted via a selfadministered pre-tested questionnaire. The prevalence of breakfast skipping among respondents of the present study was 53.85%. Among students, about 213 (52.9%) were male and 190 (47.1%) were female. Univariate and bivariate analysis were used to describe the variables as well as to study the association between two variables, respectively where there was significant association, multivariate analysis was conducted to control for confounders. Factors found to be significantly associated (p<0.05) with breakfast skipping were faculty, academic performance, exercise, accommodation, smoking habit, skipping of lunch. Respondents who stayed in the houses with there were less likely to skip breakfast compared to those staying in hostels with meals catered (OR: 4.94, 2.21-11.06), hostels without meal catered (OR: 3.71, 1.71-8.04) or rented houses without family (OR: 2.32, 1.28-4.19). Respondent from Engineering & Physical Science (OR: 2.94, 1.66-5.21) and Arts & Commerce faculty (OR: 2.14, 1.20-3.81) had higher odds for skipping breakfast compared to the Life & Health Science. Study respondents who were smoker intended to skip breakfast (OR: 3.94, 1.74-8.93) higher than non-smoker. Respondents who skipped their breakfast have higher odds of skipping the lunch (OR: 2.23, 0.98-5.04) as well as the dinner (OR: 2.42, 1.03-5.69). The prevalence of breakfast skipping among the university students was high. Health promotion strategies should be initiated to encourage all students to eat breakfast regularly.

Keywords: Breakfast skipping; Noakhali; Bangladesh