Is Health Literacy Adequate in Assessing Nutrition Knowledge Level?

Abstract

Health literacy can be defined as individuals having the right knowledge, motivation and skill to make the right decisions about themselves, to apply the decisions and to reach, understand and evaluate this information. Health literacy is not only an important issue for hospitalized individuals but also for healthy individuals. Many different tools have been developed to determine the level of health literacy, especially Test of Functional Health Literacy in Adults (TOFHLA), Newest Vital Sign (NVS) and Rapid Estimate of Adult Literacy in Medicine (REALM). Nutrition literacy, one of the important components of health literacy, is defined as the degree to which individuals can obtain, process and understand information about basic nutrition needed to make healthy decisions. It is very important to determine the level of nutritional information of individuals in the prevention of chronic diseases related to nutrition and prevention of these diseases. However, there is not yet a tool developed in Turkey to determine the level of nutrition literacy. Therefore, valid and reliable nutrition literacy tools should be developed by relevant experts to evaluate correctly the levels of knowledge in nutrition-related subjects, one of the important components of the health of the individual. This article focused on the importance of health literacy in assessing the level of nutrition knowledge.