Impact Study of Institutional Food Supplementation on Nutritional Status of Pre-school Children

Aims: To assess the Nutritional status of urban and semi-urban pre-school children of Dharwad, at baseline and after institutional supplementation.

Study Design: Nutritional status of the pre-school children was assessed based on anthropometry and clinical examination. Urban pre-school children were treated as control and semi-urban pre-school children were supplemented with institutional food for three months (experimental). Nutritional status were measured before and after institutional food supplementation.

Place and Duration of Study: Department of Food Science and Nutrition, College of Community Science, University of Agricultural Science, Dharwad, Karnataka, India. The experiment was conducted between July 2017 and July 2018.

Methodology: A sample size of 100 pre-school children (3-6 years) were selected, out of which, 50 children from urban and another 50 children from semi-urban school were randomly selected from Dharwad district. Nutritional status of the pre-school children was assessed based on anthropometry and clinical examination. Nutritional status were measured before and after institutional food supplementation, in both schools.

Results: Results revealed that, at baseline nutritional status were higher in urban pre-school children compare to semi-urban pre-school children, but after supplementing with the institutional food, significant improvement in anthropometric measurements were observed in semi-urban group and they were on par with the urban children in terms of nutritional status.

Conclusion: The weight for age is an indicator of current nutritional status, whereas height for age is an indicator of past nutritional status, so height improvement was observed in urban group and weight improvement was observed in semi-urban group. Finally concluded that food intervention can go long way in changing the current malnutrition scenario.