4 months ago
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A project to empower adolescent schoolgirls in the coastal belt of the city has highlighted the need to pay special attention to dietary habits of children and ensure their nutritional requirements.
Project Changathi was rolled out by the non-governmental organisation Kanal in a school in the Poonthura area. A bio-psycho-social care and support programme, it focussed specifically on class VII students to ensure their holistic development and equip them to tackle challenges.
A range of activities were initiated by Kanal early on as part of Changathi, including various assessments to understand the children, their circumstances, and problems faced by them.
Assessment
A significant assessment done related to nutrition. It was conducted by a community nutritionist to understand the students’ eating habits and deficiency disorders, if any. Done using purposive sampling among 167 students, the assessment adopted the ABC method (anthropometric, biochemical and laboratory methods, clinical and dietary evaluation methods).
The anthropometric assessment focussed on students’ height, weight, and BMI (body mass index). A medical camp detected low haemoglobin levels among the students, though more than half of them had not had started their first menstruation cycle.
Clinical assessment was held to identify visible signs of nutritional deficiencies among the students. This was followed by a dietary evaluation during which face-to-face interaction was held with the children to understand their dietary habits, frequency of eating nutritious food, and pattern of food intake.
Preliminary findings indicated that 75% of the students had vitamin deficiencies owing to inadequate intake of fruits, vegetables, nuts, and leafy greens. As fish was readily available, an overwhelming preference was for it as compared to vegetables. While only 31.13% of the students incorporated vegetables in their daily diet, just 1.79% reported consuming green leafy vegetables on a daily basis.
Junk food
Around 18% of the students skipped at least one meal a day for various reasons. More than 57% of them showed an inclination towards junk food, while 38.92% of them indicated they often consumed food from hotels. The children said their fathers mostly went out to sea returning at odd hours, while their mothers were too tired after spending the day selling fish. As a result, food was frequently bought from outside.
Worryingly, 75% of the students were found to consume less than five glasses of water a day, though the dietary recommendation is at least eight glasses. As an immediate intervention, Kanal implemented ‘Water Bell, a student-led campaign to enhance the water intake of not only class VII students but also the entire school from class V to X. A team of student volunteers was deployed to monitor the water intake, which improved to 11 glasses.
Kanal director Anson P.D. Alexander says students were found to have deficiency disorders. Low haemoglobin (Hb) levels were especially worrying as the onset of periods would likely lead to a further fall in them. The students had low physical activity and were in need of more awareness of menstruation.
Though Kanal had taken steps to conduct awareness classes to emphasise the importance of balanced diet and cost-effective eating habits, the findings underscored the need for government programmes to reach these girl students, strengthening of adolescent clubs in coastal areas, regular health check-ups, and nutrition classes for children and parents, he said.
