Childhood obesity is an important problem due to its increasing prevalance and being a precursor of adult obesity. School-based interventions are methods used to reduce childhood obesity. Because primary education is obligatory and giving the chance to reach all children from each socioeconomic status school-based interventions has an increasing importance.This study is designed to determine the physical activity status and nutritional knowledege of primary school teachers who are also role-model for students. Nutrition knowledge and its source, physical activity status of 143 teachers who are from 15 different cities of Turkey are determined by a self-report questionaire. The nutritional knowledge of 80.9% of the teachers was found to be inadequate whereas only 19.1% of them had adequate knowledge. According to physical activity of the total %77.9 was physically inactive. Eventually we conclude that primary school teachers need to be educated about healthy nutrition and they are physically inactive.
Keywords: Primary school teacher, nutritional knowledge, source of nutritional knowledge, physical activity