تعيين رابطه مصرف ميان وعده در كودكان دبستاني ياسوج شاخص هاي تن سنجي

A Study on the Relationship Between Mid-day Snack in Schoolchildren with thier Nutritional Status

The child who does not have access to enough food and hygiene can be mentally and corpally disabled in the future. Children spend a lot of their time in school making nutrition at school a critical and crucial issue. This study was designed to evaluate the relation between having a snack at school with the nutritional status of schoolchildren. 1970 students out of 13515 were selected by cluster random sampling. A questionnaire was used to collect anthropometric and demographic information. The results showed that 73.6% of children used to take a snack in school, but in the day of assessment only 49.2% had a snack with themselves. The most common used snacks were biscuits , cakes and fruits. There was a significant correlation between taking a snack and parentʹs education as well as fatherʹs occupation (P<0.05). Since a snack had a significant correlation with height for age of children, we suggest that families of schoolchildren, especially illiterate families should be trained about the importance of snacks. In addition we suggest that the school feeding program should be considered a priority by policy makers.