Background: Dietary habitsdeveloped during adolescence maintain during adulthood.Adolescents’ adverse dietaryhabits contribute in thedevelopment of chronic illnesses later in life.Objectives: to assess theprevalence of practicing six dietary habits among freshmen students in Kuwait University and to examine the endogenous and exogenous correlates forpracticing these habits.Design: A cross sectional study was conducted and multistage stratified sampling technique was employed.Subjects: 1547 freshmen university students in Kuwait University.Settings: A self-administered questionnaire was used to cover students’:1) practicing six healthy dietary habits;2) socio-demographicexplanatory variables;3) general nutrition knowledge and knowledge relating to nutrition and disease;4) dietary health beliefs; and5) health locus of control.Results: Practicing poor, fair and good dietary habits was reported by 23.8%, 56.9% and 19.3%students respectively with no gender difference. Multivariate analysis illustrated that a relatively lower level of mother education and small/medium family sizes symbolized the exogenouscorrelates for practicing poordietary habits (OR: 1.5, CI: 1.13-1.92; OR: 1.97, CI: 1.35-2.88 respectively). However, students’ poor level of nutrition knowledge - general and related to disease - (OR: 3.4, CI: 2.48-4.54; OR: 2.6, CI: 1.9-3.92 respectively); and weak/moderate dietary health beliefs (OR: 2.84, CI: 1.96-4.12; OR: 1.79, CI; 1.22-2.61 respectively) characterized the endogenous correlates for practicing poor dietary habits.Conclusions: Practicing poor dietary habits is alarmingly high among freshmen universitystudents. Endogenous and exogenous factors significantly interact to development of poor dietary habits. Health campaigns to raise adolescents’ awareness about the importance of practicing healthy dietary habits are mandatory.