Assessment of the Actual Nutrition of High School Pupils

Abstract

Introduction: Balanced diet is one of the principal factors of maintaining health; thus, actual nutrition monitoring is an important stage of disease prevention. The objective of the study wаs tо аssess the diet, macronutrient and micronutrient composition, and caloric balance of food. Materials and methods: Actual nutrition was studied in the autumn and winter periods by analyzing meal frequency among the high school pupils (Grades 10-11; the average age: 15.9±0.7 years). Results: The eating frequency of the schoolchildren ranged 2 to 6 without any marked differences between sexes. The analysis of distribution of the daily diet energy value showed that the majority of pupils received the maximum of food calories in the evening. Evaluation of the macronutrient composition of food demonstrated high protein and fat consumption accompanied by low consumption of complex carbohydrates in both sex groups against the background of the sufficient energy value of the diet. The contents of simple carbohydrates in the diet of both boys and girls were twice as much as the permissible values. The imbalanced diet led to changes in the micronutrient status of the schoolchildren with a more pronounced deficit of calcium, magnesium, phosphorus and iron in girls. The deficit of vitamins B1, PP, and A was observed in all pupils. Undernutrition was more common in the young men while overnutrition prevailed among the girls. The risk group included 22.4% of the pupils with extreme values of the body mass index indicating pronounced changes in nutritional status. Normal BMI values were observed only in 40% of boys and in 38.3% of girls. Conclusions: We established that nutrition of the high school pupils was imbalanced and required correction.