Survey of the nutritional status and relationship between physical activity and nutritional attitude with index of BMI-for-age in Semnan girl secondary school, winter and spring, 2004

Nutritional status assessment of adolescents is very important because of the physiologic changes and rapid increase in the growth rate. The attitude of the adolescent toward food and nutrition is also a primary component of a comprehensive evaluation. There is no enough information available about adolescence nutritional status and associated factors in adolescent of different area of Iran specially in Semnan. Thus this study with object of determining of the nutrition status and relationship between physical activity and nutritional attitude with index of BMI-for-age in Semnan girl secondary school inducted. In a cross-sectional study, using two stage cluster sampling 256 girl students aged 14-15 year old were randomly selected from 8 Semnan secondary schools. Weight and height were measured and BMI was calculated. Nutritional status was defined by indice of BMI-for-age, weight-for-age, height-for-age from reference CDC2000, as having <5th percentile (wasting or stunting), between 5th and 85th (normal), between 85th and 95th percentile (overweight or tall) and ≥ 95th (obese). Physical activity and nutritional attitude were collected by questionnaires. In this survey high percent of students, respectively 8.6% and 9% were wasting and stunting (expected 5%).Overweight rate according to index BMI-for-age was 11.7% (expected 10%). Data analyzed indicated that score physical activity and mean nutritional attitude had significant relationship with index of BMI-for-age in girl's pupils. Overweight, specially wasting and stunting rate in Semnan girl secondary school was high and preventive actions like, make physical activity enjoyable and education to increase nutritional attitude level are necessary to induct.