Determinants of Nutritional Condition: Discordance between Existing Understanding and Current Observation- A Study among the School Students of West Bengal

Tapas Saha¹, Tushar Kanti Pathak² and Partha Sarathi Mukherjee^1,

¹Liver Foundation, West Bengal, 12 Kyd Street, Kolkata, India

²Department of Health and Family Welfare, Government of West Bengal, India

Cite this paper

Tapas Saha, Tushar Kanti Pathak and Partha Sarathi Mukherjee. Determinants of Nutritional Condition: Discordance between Existing Understanding and Current Observation- A Study among the School Students of West Bengal. American Journal of Sports Science and Medicine. 2014; 2(5A):23-28. doi: 10.12691/AJSSM-2-5A-6

Abstract

Ensuring food security and nutrition in India is a great challenge considering continuous increase in population. Every adult individual should understand nutrition and the reason of malnutrition (under and over). For students, understanding of proper nutrition is a responsibility of their parents and teachers primarily. As food is the fuel of human living and correct food supplement is the key of growth and development, students should be guided accordingly to secure their future and it’s more important when few of them will dream to be successful in sports. In general participation in sports and games should be for all, every student needs to do regular exercise and thus understanding of nutrition is essential. Therefore, to identify the determinants of nutritional condition in a population, particularly in student community will have some significance in health education and can be useful also in sports science. This study is aimed to review the determinants of nutritional condition of the school students for example, parental education, occupation and number of family members on their child nourishment and to identify the social basis of growth and development in children and adolescent. The data were collected by Sarbashiksha Mission, Bardhaman; Government of West Bengal. To define underweight and obese category, we used the sex- and age-specific body mass index cutoffs as referred by Khadilkar et al (Indian Pediatrics). Parental socioeconomic determinants have not had any significant effect always on their child's nourishment. This study reveals that existing understanding about the parental education, occupation, number of family members and following impact on the nutrition of their children is not correct. Financially affluent people will have more fat, while poor people are suffering with under nutrition, higher education can influence proper growth and more members in a family will contribute a lesser amount of food distributed to each individual if the family is not well-off, these are the existing understanding with regard to nutrition. But there is a discordance between existing understanding and current observation. It is revealed in this study that we need to understand nutrition in a holistic approach rather than driven by conventional thinking. It is observed, parents, teacher must be aware that socioeconomic conditions are not the only determinants of nutritional condition, perhaps we need to have the proper health education, knowledge of correct food supplement can ensure proper nutrition of children and adolescent even in underprivileged section. We have to find out the probable reasons for such scenario, students are the future of this country, they should be guided by a correct understanding of nutrition, the role of exercise in daily life to ensure the proper nutrition.

Keywords

education, occupation, underweight, obesity, students, exercise, children

Copyright

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

References

[1]	Child Nutrition in India: Vinod K. Mishra, Subrata Lahiri, and Norman Y. Luther. National Family Health Survey Subject Reports Number 14. June 1999.
[2]	UNICEF REPORT 2006.
[3]	47% of children in India are underweight: UNICEF; Info Change News & Features, May 2006.
[4]	Magnitude of Malnutrition and Iron Deficiency Anemia among Rural School Children: An Appraisal: Rachana Bhoite, Uma Iyer ,Foods and Nutrition Department, M.S. University of Baroda, Vadodara.; ASIAN J. EXP. BIOL. SCI. VOL 2 (2) 2011: 354-361.
[5]	Kotecha, P.V. (2008) Micronutrient malnutrition in India: Let us say “no” to it. Indian J community Med; 33: 9-10.
[6]	Mason, J.B (2003) At least one third of poor countries diseases burden is due to malnutrition: diseases control priorities project: working paper no. 1, March 2003.
[7]	VV Khadilkar, AV Khadilkar, AB Borade and SA Chiplonkar: Body Mass Index Cut-offs for Screening for Childhood Overweight and Obesity in Indian Children, INDIAN PEDIATRICS, VOLUME 49, JANUARY 16, 2012.
[8]	Kapil U, Singh P, Pathak P, Dwivedi SN, Bhasin S. Prevalence of obesity among affluent adolescent school children in Delhi. Indian Pediatr. 2002; 39: 365-8.
[9]	Emmanuel Skoufias: Parental Education and Child Nutrition in Indonesia International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington DC, Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies Vol 35 No 1, April 1999, pp. 99-119.
[10]	Socioeconomic Status And Child Development: Robert H. Bradley and Robert F. Corwyn, Center for Applied Studies in Education, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, 2801 S. University Ave., Little Rock, Arkansas 72204.
[11]	The Dual Burden of Overweight and Underweight in Developing Countries: Marya Khan, research associate with the Population Reference Bureau; Published at Population Reference Bureau, March 2006.
[12]	Is Frequency of Shared Family Meals Related to the Nutritional Health of Children and Adolescents? Amber J. Hammons, PhD* and Barbara H. Fiese, PhD; Published at American Academy of Pediatrics on 2nd May, 2011.
[13]	WHO, information series on school health, document 13, Malaria prevention and control: An important responsibility of a health promoting school, 2007.
[14]	The influence of parental income on children outcomes: Susan E. Mayer, Associate Professor in the Harris School of Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago; was published by Knowledge Management Group, Ministry of Social Development, Te Manatu Whakahiato Ora 2002.