A Study on the Relationship between Nutrition Status and Physical Fitness of School Boys

Abstract

Nutritional status during school age is a major determinant of nutritional and health status in adult life. Many studies showed that under nutrition and anaemia had an adverse impact on performance and consequently led to reduction in wages for persons employed in manual labour. The past three decades have witnessed the emergence of over nutrition as a problem in school-age children in developed countries and in affluent urban segments in developing countries. The main determinants of performance are physical fitness and skill. Longitudinal studies have shown that the lifestyle and physical fitness during childhood and adolescence were major determinants of lifestyle, physical fitness and freedom from non-communicable diseases in adult life. According to the knowledge gathered from available literature it was somehow clear that numerous studies have been conducted to determine the relationship between body composition and body type on motor performance, but research in the area directly concerned with determining the relationship between nutrition status and physical fitness components is rare so the author strived to ponder on the fact how physical performance gets affected by the nutrition status and thus selected the problem A STUDY ON THE REALATIONSHIP BETWEEN NUTRITION STATUS AND PHYSICAL FITNESS OF SCHOOL BOYS. PURPOSE OF THE STUDY: The main purpose of the study is to find out if there is any relationship between Nutrition status and Physical fitness of school going boys.A total of 44 boys within the age group of 8-9 years were selected from the Puratan Pitamberpur Primary School and Chapra Primary School. The subjects were selected randomly with the help of drawing lots for the present study. The subjects were selected from rural areas of West Bengal. The rural area subjects The life style including food habits, made of transport, nature of recreation and amusement were also considered. AAHPERD youth fitness battery was used for assessment of motor performance and weight for age was adopted as the measure of nutrition status. Mean SD. were computed to determine descriptive statistics and further ANOVA was worked out for analysis of variance. From data analysis it appears that there was no. significant difference between the different nutrition status groups with respect to motor performance variables except the variable sit up which shows significant difference at 0.02 level. Though in the cases of 50 mt dash, and 600 mts. run the F values are near to significant. From the data analysis it can also be inferred that the motor performance variables like 50 mts. dash, 600 mts. run & walk, and sit up are influenced by the nutrition status of an individual to the greater extent or in other way it can be deduced that the fitness variable like sit up, 50 mts. dash and 600 mts. run are determinants of