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Abstract

College is a time of transition from adolescence to adulthood where habit that begins in childhood grows or stops to exist and new habits are formed. Learning to make an appropriate nutritious food choice may be difficult for many college students as most of their meals were once provided by parents. This study empirically examines the factors influencing college students in making nutritious food choice. Hundred students went through a questionnaire survey. Personally administered questionnaires were used and through a series of analyses from the frequencies, descriptive to inferential statistics. Results revealed that both taste and price influenced college students in making nutritious food choice which is a major determinant considered by them. This study will encourage college students to define healthy eating behaviors and lifestyle. With that, food operators should be able to prepare food that have greater quality and better taste and are fresher, more nutritious, healthy, better for the environment, and affordable for the college students.

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Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge the help of the respondents for the time and willingness to participate in this study. Thank you to the management of Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM Penang) for allowing us to carry out this work. Deepest thanks and appreciation to our family for the support and understanding in completing this study. Lastly, a note of thanks to all the authors who contributed by holding up and facilitating the study together.

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Correspondence to Nor Azureen Rozekhi .

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Rozekhi, N.A., Hussin, S., Salmi, N.S., Bashir, M.‘.A., Kirap, S.M.A. (2019). Influences on College Students in Making Nutritious Food Choice. In: Mat Noor, A., Mohd Zakuan, Z., Muhamad Noor, S. (eds) Proceedings of the Second International Conference on the Future of ASEAN (ICoFA) 2017 - Volume 1. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-8730-1_2

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