Dietary habits and nutritional status of children in preschool age

摘要

Early childhood is the most important for the overalluddevelopment of the personality. During this period,udeach child realizes that it is an independent entity,udand it expresses certain requirements, desires, actions,udproceedings and behaviour. Our research aims to displayudnutritional status and degree of obesity amongudpreschool children in the Republic of Macedonia andudnutritional quality of their diet.udBecause of the increasing incidence of obesity in childhood and its consequences as a public health problem, the Institute of Public Health in Skopje implemented activities to assess the growth and nutritional status of children from the Republic of Macedonia. The study included preschool children from Veles, Kocani, Kumanovo, Skopje, Strumica, Prilep and Stip. Activities were conducted during 2013 by a unique methodology in the procedure of monitoring the growth and assessment of nutritional status among children in 1995udbefore the start of the first school year, first grade. The results were processed by standard deviation method.udDeviation of the body mass in the examined populationudof the children aged 7, in the range of +/- 2 and 3udSD. Malnutrition with deviations in growth was foundudin 0.7% of the examined population group and moderateudmalnutrition was among 3.3%. Overweight andudobesity was found in 28.4% of examined children.udSince 1995 examined preschool children 5.6% wereudvery obese children.udDisruptions in the nutritional status such as malnutrition, and particularly state of obesity have roots in early childhood. Therefore it is very important to do prevention at an early childhood preschool age withudproper guidance in eating habits and lifestyle and promoting physical activity.