Abstract:
Adolescents with good nutritional status would grow to become healthy adult with
increased work productivity. Their dietary intake and dietary behaviour directly affects
their nutritional status. Thus, a cross sectional survey was conducted to assess the
nutritional status and dietary intake of adolescents studying in schools of Kohalpur
municipality, Banke district. From randomly selected eight schools, 205 adolescents were
chosen by random selection according to proportion. A well designed and pretested set of
questionnaire was used to collect information regarding socio-economic condition,
physical activity, dietary practices, and hygiene and sanitation conditions of the target
population. Weight and height were measured by using digital weighing balance and
stadiometer respectively. Dietary intake was assessed by 24 hour dietary recall and food
frequency questionnaire. Data collected was analysed using WHO Anthroplus version
1.0.4, SPSS version 20 and Microsoft excel. Chi-square test and fisher exact were used to
analyse the factors associated with nutritional status.
The prevalence of stunting, thinness and obesity were 21%, 5.9% and 7.8%
respectively. The prevalence of insufficient intake of the nutrients as energy, protein, added
fat, calcium, and iron was 85.37%, 41.95%, 92.20%, 77.56%, 76.58% respectively.
Similarly of 79.02% of adolescent consume foods from at least 4 food groups out of 7.
Skipping of meals was also common among the study group. Mean intake of nutrients by
girls and boys of different age groups are insufficient except protein for boys and also there
were high dispersion among individual intakes of the subjects. Ethnicity (p=0.016),
purification of drinking water (p=0.004), trying to gain weight (p=0.031) were found to be
statically associated with stunting. Gender (p=0.050), family size (p=0.002), number of
adolescents in family (0.028), sleeping hours (p=0.027), and perception about own body
size (p=0.000), trying to lose weight (p=0.001) and frequency of consumption of fast foods
(0.026) were associated with thinness or obesity. Proper intervention programmes should
be implemented in order to correct the nutritional status nutrient intake and dietary habits
of adolescent residing in Kohalpur
Description:
A dissertation submitted to the Department of Nutrition & Dietetics, Central Campus of
Technology, Tribhuvan University, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the
degree of B.Sc. in Nutrition & Dietetics
