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

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.