The purpose of this study was to investigate the current status of whole-grain knowledge, attitudes and dietary behavior for the senior and vocational high school students in Taipei area as well as the relationships among the 3 previous variables. The questionnaires related to whole-grain knowledge and attitudes and modified 24-hr dietary recall for whole-grain intake were designed. By using purposive sampling, 466 valid samples were collected. After analyzing data, the results showed that:
1. The test of the whole-grain knowledge was not good and the average percentage of correct answers was 56.9%.
2. In the measurement of the whole-grain attitudes with Likert 5-point scale, the students’ average score for each question was 3.27.
3. On daily basis, each student ate 1.9 servings of whole-grain food, which in order were rice, corn, western-style wheaten food, Chinese wheaten food, cereals. Among them, corn was the most often taken whole-grain food.
4.There was significantly positive relationship between knowledge and attitudes as well as attitude and dietary behavior. However, there was no significant relationship between knowledge and dietary behavior.
5.The following part was the results of the differences related to personal characteristics in the aspects of whole-grain knowledge, attitudes and dietary behavior.
(1) The female students had higher scores than the male students in the area: whole- grain nutrients, healthy attitude of whole-grain and daily cereal serving.
(2) Junior students showed the better scores of knowledge than sophomore students. On the other hand, sophomore students had higher scores of attitude and dietary behavior.
(3) The underweight students had healthier attitude than the ideal-body-weight students. Overweight students ate more servings of corn than ideal-body-weight and obese students.
(4) The students from the family of the medium and medium-low social status had higher scores of healthy attitude than those students from the low social status.
