A Study on Nutrition Status and Dietary Adequacy among School-going Adolescent Girls in Lilongwe City, Malawi

Introduction: Adequate nutrition is important for all human beings and it is even more important for adolescent girls because poor dietary habits and inadequate nutrition have an effect on their health and increase the risk of having low birth weight babies. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to generate information on the nutrition status and the dietary adequacy of school going adolescent girls which may be used to improve nutritional status of adolescent girls.  Methodology: This was a cross-sectional study with a comparative aspect where 179 adolescent girls were randomly selected from 10 schools within Lilongwe city, with 87 adolescent girls from 5 public schools and 92 adolescent girls from 5 private schools. All the adolescent girls were weighed and their heights taken in order to determine nutritional status using BMI for age percentiles by the World health Organisation. Dietary intake was determined using 24 hour recall questionnaires while dietary habits were determined by food frequency and dietary diversity questionnaires. Data were analysed using SPSS version 20 and Nutri-survey software the results were of nutrient adequacy were compared with the recommended daily allowances for adolescent girls. Results: The results showed that the prevalence of underweight, normal weight, overweight and obese in public schools were 1.4%, 72.9%, 18.3% and 7.6% and 1%, 76.3%, 18% and 4.7% in private schools respectively. The most common consumed food at more than once a day were cereals in both private (50%) and public (58.65%) schools while the least consumed food groups were legumes  at (5.7%) and (29.9%) in public schools and  fruits (3.3%) and 31.5% respectively. Conclusion: The study has shown that there are no significant differences between the demographic and socio economic characteristics among public and private school adolescent girl. The most frequently consumed food group was cereals due to reliance on maize as a main source of energy in the diets however there was low consumption of organ meat which maybe the reason why adolescent girls didn’t meet the RDA’s for iron. Findings for dietary diversity have sh own that the majority of adolescent girls in both public and private schools consumed more than six food groups in a day which may explain why the majority had a normal BMI. This study has shown adolescent girls do not meet the RDA’s for energy, calcium and iron while because of low intake of legumes, organ meat and fruits. Overweight and obesity is more prevalent in private schools compared to public schools and that the most affected age group is 13 years.