Adolescent :: Factors influencing Nutrition of Adolescents

Common Factors
• Conditioning factors:
- Infectious diseases are an important factor responsible for malnutrition, particularly in children and adolescents. Diarrhea, intestinal parasites, malaria and tuberculosis all contribute to malnutrition.
- Poor environmental sanitation also leads to repeated bouts of infections.
- Girls lose a considerable amount of iron (average 1 mg daily) during menstruation. Therefore, they require additional iron rich foods and supplements.

• Cultural factors:
- Food habits, customs, beliefs, traditions and attitudes: Food habits are among the oldest and most deep entrenched aspects of any culture. The family plays an important role in shaping food habits and these habits are passed from one generation to the other. Rice is the staple cereal in eastern and southern India, whereas wheat is the staple cereal in the north. Papaya is avoided during pregnancy because it is believed to cause abortions. There are also beliefs about not and cold foods, light and heavy foods.

- Religion: Religion has a powerful influence on food habits. Hindus do not eat beef, while Muslims do not eat pork. Orthodox Hindus and Jains do not eat mea, fish, eggs and certain vegetables like onions. These are known as food taboos which prevent people from consuming nutritive iron-rich foods even when these are easily available.

- Food fads: In the selection of foods, personal likes and dislikes may stand in the way of correcting nutritional deficiencies.

- Cooking practices: Draining away the rice water at the end of cooking, prolonged boiling in open pans and peeling of vegetables all influence the nutritive value of foods.

- Social customs: In some communities, men eat first and women eat last and poorly.

• Socio-economic factors:
Malnutrition an anaemia are largely a by-product of poverty, ignorance, insufficient education, lack of knowledge regarding nutritive value of foods, large family size, etc. These factors bear most directly on the quality of life and nutritional status of an individual.

• Gender issues:
Girls and young women are discriminated against in both quantity and quality of food. On to of this, they are married early and suffer early pregnancy and child birth further compromising their nutritional status.

Factors specific to adolescents.
Adolescents have a world of their won and have a different eating pattern that influence their nutrition

• Typical Eating Pattern of Adolescents
- Adolescence is a period of emergence of an individual into a more independent phase of life, which influences food behaviour also.
- There is a lack of a sense of urgency regarding future health – limited future perspective.
- Family meals become less important.
- Break away form family eating patterns into improper dietary habits
- Succumb to unbalanced diets under influence of peers, mass media, socio cultural norms in their gangs / cliques
- Personal self esteem and body image guide the eating behaviour
- Missing meals especially breakfast is extremely common. SHAHN Survey-2002 among Delhi School students reveals that 30% boys and 40% girls skip one meal everyday a breakfast is the commonest casualty (54%)
- Snacks are eaten by over 75% of all application adolescent and provide them a fourth to a third of their calorie intake (Jenkins, 1987). SHAHN Survey – 2002 reveals that 40% girls and 50% boys recall having consumed junk food in last 24 hours. However snacking provides the relaxing atmosphere important for group interactions among the teens.
- Fast food joints are minly patronized by adolescents – with soft drinks, burgers and pizzas being the favourite foods. These spoil the appetite for regular meals and are high on calories and low on nutrients.
- Food selection is based mainly on availability, convenience, time, rather than food value.