Dear Aparna,
The cause of an individual’s nutritional status vis a vis nutrition gap is influenced by three broad categories of factors – food, care and health where basic causes include poverty, illiteracy, social norms and behaviour. Maternal nutrition and health greatly influences child nutritional status. Household food security, often influenced by such factors as poverty, drought and other emergencies, has an important role in determining the state of child and maternal nutrition in rural areas.
A pre- tested structured schedule need be used for the survey and mothers are to be personally interviewed for getting better output. Such assessments should incorporate evaluation of the nutritional status of the population viz. Children, women of child-bearing age, adults and elderly persons. Nutritional assessment of a population should include anthropometric measurements, clinical assessment, the assessment of food availability and uses, the level of morbidity and mortality among children and adults, and the presence and prevalence of micronutrient deficiencies.
SPSS software, version 18.0 may be used towards data analysis.
Dear Aparna,
According to several authors Several factors can influence the nutritional status of an individual:
• Biological variables: heredity, predisposition, age, state of health.
• Behavioural factors and lifestyle: smoking, hygiene, nutrition, the practice of sports, the pace of life and work, the fact of living in the city or in the country, etc.
• Socio-economic factors: access to health care, the level of education, income, occupation, etc.
• The psychological and emotional state.
• The particular sensitivity of each individual.
• Environmental factors ... etc.
In addition, anthropometric measures are an excellent indicator of the nutritional status of vulnerable groups and especially individuals (children and elderly). They are usually the main component of the nutritional surveillance systems, however, to provide a range of concrete measures should be supplemented with other types of information that reveal the power deficit.
I can suggest a few measures that you use in population studies
Total body fat%
Visceral fat %
Skeletal body mass
Lean body mass.
A number of other indicators have been explored by Mishra et al in the paper - Public health semantics of the YY paradox.
https://peerj.com/preprints/1476/
Dear aparna there are many ways to find nutritional gap in the population most widely used it anthopometric measurements (in combination of height, weight and BMI) with food habit, household food security, food frequency or 24 hour dietary recalls are major. It depends how much information regarding social and environmental factors you wanna measure. You feel everything is important but decide what you can make best with your limitations.
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