BORNEO SCIENCE 31: SEPTEMBER 2012 104 RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN NUTRITIONAL KNOWLEDGE AND HEALTHY ATTITUDE AND PRACTICE DURING PREGNANCY Mitra Mirsanjari 1 , Wan Abdul Manan Wan Muda 1 , Affizal Ahmad 1 , Mohd Shukri Othman 2 , Maryam Mosavat 2 & Mir Mehrdad Mirsanjari 3 1 School of Health Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia,16150, Kubang Kerian, Kelantan. 2 School of Medical Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia,16150, Kubang Kerian, Kelantan. 3 Department of Environmental Sciences, Malayer University, Malayer, Iran. ABSTRACT. In prenatal nutrition, intake of adequate and balanced diet is required for successful pregnancy outcomes. The aim of this study is to determine whether there is an association between different levels of nutritional knowledge of pregnant women and healthy attitude and practice. This was a cross-sectional study among a group of normal pregnant Malay women who were selected based on systematic sampling during their routine antenatal follow up in the clinic of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.A self-administered questionnaire of knowledge, attitude and practice of food and nutrition was used. The association of knowledge with healthy food practice and attitude was obtained with chi- square test. Findings of this study showed there was a significant association between level of nutritional knowledge and food practices on: frequency of snack (P= 0.003) and fast food consumption (P= 0.043), choice of healthy food for dinner (P = 0.005) and lunch (P= 0.016), frequency of eating chicken (P= 0.002), consumption of vitamin and mineral supplements (P= 0.006), type of activity during free time (P<0.001), kind of drink (P= 0.038), attitude about significance of physical activity (P= 0.003) and most important items when buying foods (P= 0.006). On the other hand, there was no significant association between knowledge level of participants and their frequency and type of breakfast intake (P= 0.836), consumption of healthy snacks (P= 0.168), frequency of consumption of fish and sea foods, meat, egg, beans, vegetables, fruits, and milk. This study showed most pregnant women have moderate or good nutritional knowledge. But their knowledge needs to be improved in order to affect their practices more effectively. KEYWORDS. Dietary habits, level of knowledge, pregnancy INTRODUCTION Adequate nutritional intake during pregnancy has been recognized as an important factor for healthy pregnancy and desired birth outcomes (Bawadia et al., 2010). It was found that deficiency of nutrients during gestation may causethe fetus to receive suboptimal micro and macro nutrients, causing inadequate intrauterine growth and development, inherited malformations, preterm deliveries, and pregnancy complications (Redmer et al., 2004). Thus, attention to appropriate dietary behavior and proper nutrient intake will supply adequate nourishment to achieve optimum health for both mother and child (Wen et al., 2010; Verbeke & De Bourdeaudhuij, 2007). Studies show that nutritional knowledge affects the quality of food intake and also healthy choices of purchased food (O’Brien & Davies, 2007; Verbeke, 2008). Advancement of individual nutrition knowledge (NK) provides new information which may stimulate changing of attitude and subsequently result in enhancement of dietary practices (De Vriendt et al., 2009). One study showed that health advice encouraged expectant mothers to improve their food intake (Anderson et al., 1993); however another study indicated that higher knowledge of pregnant women was not an indicator to cause them to change their nutritional habits (Verbeke & De Bourdeaudhuij, 2007). Given the importance of knowledge on attitude and practice, and given the existence of limited studies in Malaysia about nutritional knowledge of pregnant women and their dietary behaviours, the objective of this study is to examine whether different levels of nutritional knowledge of pregnant women