assistant professor MGMIHS NAVI MUMBAI, Maharashtra, India
Objectives: To assess the pattern of dietary iron intake and associated factors of iron intake among adolescent girls.
Methods: Three hundred and seventy one adolescent girls (10-19 years) were randomly selected from rural area of Raigad district, Maharastra state India. Sociodemographic variables and dietary factors were collected by the semistructured questionnaire. Twenty four hour diet recall and iron food frequency were administered to assess the dietary iron intake and dietary pattern. Haemoglobin were also assessed through cyan-methemoglobin method <. Height, weight were also measured through standardized methods. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software was used to calculate chi-square (X2) test and Pearson correlation (r) tests.
Results: Participants had mean age of 15.5 years. The 30%, 12% and 8% of the participants were having mild, moderate and severe anemia respectively rest were normal. Only 27% of the participants were having adequate amount of dietary iron. Energy, protein, iron, vitamin C, B12, folic acid, calcium and zinc were inadequate among participants, may lead to iron deficiency anemia. The results of chi square test indicated that parent’s education, socioeconomic status, BMI, meal skipping and number of meals were significantly associated with dietary iron intake among study participants. Anaemia was significantly (p≤0.05) associated with age, parents education, occupation, family type, socioeconomic status and BMI of the participants. Significant positive correlation (p≤0.05) was found between hemoglobin and protein iron, vitamin C, zinc, calcium, folic acid intake.
Conclusions: The majority of the participants were consuming inadequate iron in the diet. The dietary pattern showed a lower intake of iron containing food stuffs and iron promoting foods. Meal skipping, parent’s education, socioeconomic status and number of meals in a day were significantly related to dietary iron intake. Therefore, there is an urgent need to plan comprehensive nutrition education intervention to change the behavior of rural adolescent girls.
Funding Sources: It was cross sectional study so there was no funding.
