Nutrition in adolescent_girls
- 1. Sohag Topic: Nutrition in Adolescent Girls
- 4. • Adequate availability of food in terms of quantity as well as quality, which depends on socioeconomic status, food practices, cultural traditions, and allocation of the food. • The ability to digest, absorb, and utilize the food. This ability can be hampered by infection and by metabolic disorders. • Poverty is considered the prime factor determining food consumption; however, cultural factors too play a strong role
- 5. Nutritional problem • Inappropriate dietary intakes during adolescence can have several consequences. It can: • Potentially retard physical growth, reduce intellectual capacity and delay sexual maturation • Affect young people’s risk for a number of immediate health problems such as iron deficiency, under nutrition, stunting, bone health, eating disorders and obesity. • Affect concentration, learning and school performance in school- going adolescents.
- 6. Cont… • Has long-term implications. For example, low calcium intake during adolescence is associated with low bone density and an increased risk for osteoporosis later in life • Being overweight as an adolescent is associated higher risk for diabetes as an adult • High fat intake during adolescence and into adulthood is associated with an increased risk of heart disease • Stunting and underweight among girls during adolescence, continuing into early pregnancies, increases the obstetric risk for women.
- 7. • Adolescents, particularly girls, are especially vulnerable to iron deficiency due to low intake and absorption of iron, and increased iron requirements for growth and replacement of menstrual blood losses • Mild to moderate iron deficiency, even without anemia, has adverse functional consequences • During adolescence, women’s bodies develop and prepare for future childbearing. Low iron stores in young women of reproductive age makes them susceptible to iron deficiency anaemia because dietary intake alone is insufficient in most cases to meet the iron requirements of pregnancy Nutritional Anemia
- 8. • Anemia in adolescence puts a young woman and her future child at risk of premature birth, low birth weight, and increased perinatal mortality. • Infants born to iron-deficient mothers also have higher prevalence of anemia in the first six months of life. Maternal mortality is increased in women whose hemoglobin levels fall below 6-7 g/dl Cont….
- 9. Guiding Principle for Appropriate Complementary Feeding • Continue frequent, on-demand breastfeeding until 2 years of age or beyond; • Practice responsive feeding (for example, feed infants directly and assist older children. Feed slowly and patiently, encourage them to eat but do not force them, talk to the child and maintain eye contact); • Practice good hygiene and proper food handling; • Start at 6 months with small amounts of food and increase gradually as the child gets older; • Gradually increase food consistency and variety; • Increase the number of times that the child is fed: 2–3 meals per day for infants 6–8 months of age and 3–4 meals per day for infants 9–23 months of age, with 1–2 additional snacks as required; • Use fortified complementary foods or vitamin-mineral supplements as needed; and
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