Nutritional status of early adolescent girls and Mid-Day Meal programme in middle schools: A study in Mayurbhanj district of Odisha

Abstract

Adolescence is the period of transition between childhood and adulthood. Many physical, sexual, cognitive, social and emotional changes occur in this stage. During early adolescence which lies in the age group of 11-13 years, the children often start to grow more quickly. Mid-day meal programme is the popular name for the school meal programme in India. To assess the impact of Mid-Day Meal programme on the nutritional status of early adolescent girls. A total 60 number of girl students in the group of 10-13 years were randomly selected to be the respondents of the study in the middle schools in Mayurbhanj district of Odisha. Descriptive statistics like frequency, percentage, arithmetic mean, standard deviation and gap percentage (%) were adopted to analyze the data. Anthropometric measurement (like height, weight) was used to assess the nutritional status. Height, weight and body mass index were evaluated using available data. The results indicated that, a large number of the samples (56.66%) are underweight where as 38.33% of the sample girls are normal in condition. The study also found that 3.33% are overweight and only 1.66% of the sample are obese. The children are underweight and this is the sign of severe malnutrition. So, immediate action is required to improve the nutritional status of middle school girl students.