Double Burden of Malnutrition and Nutrition Knowledge Gaps Among Rural School-Going Adolescent Girls: Evidence from Netrokona, Bangladesh
Adolescents Nutritional Status and Knowledge Gaps of Netrokona Bangladesh
Abstract
Adolescence is a critical stage of physical and cognitive development, when adequate nutrition is essential for optimal growth and long-term health. The current study aims to assess the nutritional status, dietary practices and nutritional knowledge status of rural adolescent girls at netrokona Bangladesh. A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 635 school-going girls to collect data on socio-demographic characteristics, dietary patterns and BMI-for-age using WHO standards distribution. There is a notable gap in comprehensive data regarding adolescent health and nutritional status in netrokona Bangladesh, particularly for rural areas. The findings indicate a double burden of malnutrition among adolescents in netrokona district, with 38.7% classified as thin, 48.5% as having normal BMI, 10.4% as overweight, and 2.4% as obese. Moreover, their daily dietary practice results showed that 28%, 46%, and 13.39% of adolescents do not intake vegetables, fruits and meat or fish respectively. In addition, 10.7% adolescents were skipping breakfast and 77.01% did not consume milk daily. Among the participants 54.8% washed vegetables after cutting indicating nutritional knowledge gap in daily dietary practices. Regarding to address nutritional knowledge status present study found only 10.39% adolescents having better nutritional knowledge and the majority of adolescents had poor to average understanding of healthy nutritional practices. Nutritional knowledge analysis estimated strong positive correlation with maternal education, BMI for age and vegetable consumption but not with fruit, egg intake, or healthy practices. These findings suggest that better nutritional practices found specially when coupled with maternal education, might contribute to improve adolescents' nutritional status. However, these factors alone cannot overcome structural and socioeconomic barriers in rural netrokona, Bangladesh. Therefore, for sustainable improvement an integrated approach including education, economic empowerment, and community-based nutritional interventions are crucial for netrokona Bangladesh.
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