ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Nutr.
Sec. Nutrition, Psychology and Brain Health
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnut.2025.1614296
Associations of Nutritional Awareness, Body Mass Index, Mental Health, and Fitness Components Among Undergraduate University Students
Provisionally accepted
- Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
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This The study generally aimed to examine nutritional awareness, analyzed the association of of body mass index, mental health, dietary awareness, mental health, and components of physical activity fitness amongin university undergraduate students by investigating the health behaviors, physical activity, diet, sleep, internet use, and mental health of 153 undergraduate university students. Among them, 66% did not engage in high-intensity physical activities, and 54.9% did not participate in moderate-intensity workouts. Of the participants, 52.9% ate two meals a day, and 43.1% only sometimes ate breakfast. According to the survey, 56% recognized smoking as a contributing factor to health problems, and 60% said stress had a major effect on health problems. Moreover, the results reveal a statistically significant relationship weak negative connection between weight category and depression symptoms (r = −.06, p = .53) and between physical activity and depression symptoms (r = −.11, p = .23), . which calls for encouraging the increase of such studies in the future and conducting them on a larger sample and encouraging the adoption of university programs aimed at raising awareness of the importance of physical activity, healthy nutrition, and mental health. The study shows the significant benefits of encouraging healthy habits, such as exercise and good nutrition, in college students. These benefits include better weight control and improved mental well-being, suggesting that university programs focused on diet and exercise can be highly successful.
Keywords: physical activity, Mental Health, weight, female, university students
Received: 23 Apr 2025; Accepted: 04 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Alkilani, Awad, ALTamimi and Alharbi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Salwa Saad Awad, Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
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