DETERMINING THE NUTRITIONAL KNOWLEDGE LEVELS OF STUDENTS STUDYING TOURISM

Students of tourism have the potential to become employees of food and beverage establishments. It is important to examine and support their 'nutritional knowledge levels' before they enter the industry and related sectors. This study aims to determine the nutritional knowledge levels of active tourism students at Artvin Çoruh University. The study's main objective is to assess the nutritional knowledge of tourism students. This study is a quantitative research project. Accordingly, a survey was used to collect data. The data obtained were analysed using percentage and frequency distributions, the arithmetic mean, the standard deviation, the t-test and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). The findings show that participants' nutritional knowledge levels were generally accurate (x̄: 1.70). However, it was determined that perceptions of nutritional knowledge did not differ according to gender, age, class or whether participants had received nutrition education or taken related courses. The only difference was found to be related to the department/programme in which participants were studying. The study results reveal that nutritional knowledge is an important component of daily life and potential industry experience for tourism students. In this respect, the research contributes to tourism education in the service sector and to nutritional knowledge literature in the health industry.