Association of Nutritional Pattern with Sleeping Pattern among Malaysian University Students

Good nutrition is crucial for overall health and well-being as well as plays a vital role in supporting growth, development, and disease prevention. Meanwhile sleep is important for maintaining good physical health, cognitive function, emotional well-being, and overall quality of life. Nutritional intake and the sleep quality are believed to be associated with each other. According to National Sleep Foundation, eating habit can be crucial to the quality of sleep. University students are the population that may be at risk for poor sleep quality and unhealthy eating habits due to few factors including the academic pressure as the major factor. Most research focused on the link between diet and sleep quality has been focused on general adults or particular gender. As a result, there has been less research focused on the relationship between sleep and nutrition among young adults and university students in particular especially in Malaysia setting of culture. Thus, this study came out with the objective to determine the nutritional pattern, sleeping pattern and the association between each other among the students of Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM), Puncak Alam Campus. The quantitative research design was being used in conducting this study and there were 103 (n=103) of students across faculty in UiTM Puncak Alam Campus who participated as the respondents. The study used a set of questionnaires which include few items such as Chrononutrition Profile Questionnaire (CP-Q), Dutch Eating Behavior Questionnaire (DEBQ), Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire (MEQ) and Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) as the instrument. The instruments were included in a single link of Google Form and distributed online. The data obtained then being analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) software. Throughout the frequency analysis, it has been found that majority of the students developed emotional eating habit and most of the students are intermediate type which mean do not strongly lean towards being either a morning type or an evening type. Hence, chi-square test between the eating behavior and the morningness-eveningness type show a significant association (chi square = 10.788, df = 4. Sig = .029) which mean, the nutritional pattern indeed influences the sleeping pattern. This findings on the association of nutritional patterns and sleeping patterns among Malaysian university students have across-the-board implications for students, educators, and government stakeholders in the context of higher education and public health management.