Assessment of the Dietary Intake of Schoolchildren in South Africa: 15 Years after the First National Study.

Nelia Steyn,Marjanne Senekal,Gabriel Eksteen

doi:10.3390/nu8080509

Abstract

There has not been a national dietary study in children in South Africa since 1999. Fortification of flour and maize meal became mandatory in October 2003 to address micronutrient deficiencies found in the national study in 1999. The purpose of this review was to identify studies done after 1999 in schoolchildren, 6–15 years old, in order to determine whether dietary intakes reflected improvements in micronutrients, namely: iron, zinc, vitamin A, folate, thiamine, riboflavin, vitamin B6, and niacin. An electronic and hand search was done to identify all studies complying with relevant inclusion criteria. The search yielded 10 studies. Overall, there is a paucity of dietary studies which have included the fortified nutrients; only four, of which only one, reported on all micronutrients; making it difficult to determine whether fortification has improved the micronutrient intake of schoolchildren. This is further complicated by the fact that different dietary methods were used and that studies were only done in three of the nine provinces and thus are not generalizable. The results of these studies clearly point to the importance of doing a national study on the dietary intake of schoolchildren in order to confirm the outcomes of the fortification process.

Highlights

Schoolchildren are nutritionally very vulnerable both at junior and at high school levels
This review employed electronic and manual searching of peer reviewed and grey literature, as well as electronic data sets of national and local or unpublished studies done on the dietary intake of South African schoolchildren since 2000
It needs to be mentioned that risk of deficiency for the purposes of this review was defined as a mean intake below the estimated average intakes (EARs), whereas the NFCS used a cut-off of intake below 67% of the recommended dietary allowances (RDAs), which may have resulted in overestimation of risk of deficiency in that study

Summary

Introduction

Schoolchildren are nutritionally very vulnerable both at junior and at high school levels. This is explained amongst others by the fact that they spend a considerable amount of time out of the home, while it is a period of rapid growth, during adolescence [1,2]. Children and adolescents are well known to make poor food choices [3]. Crisps, fat cakes (fried dough balls), and carbonated sweet beverages [5]. This is a situation which could be contributing to the increase in childhood obesity and micronutrient deficiencies

Objectives

Methods

Findings

Discussion

Conclusion