Food habits and physical activity in relation to the nutritional status of adolescents in urban and rural senior high schools in Bogor.

Abstract

Adolescences are one of the most exciting but still challenging periods in human development. Most adolescents are the periods of life that occurs between 12 and 21 years of age, adolescence is a period of tremendous physiologic, psychologic, and cognitive transformation during which a child becomes a young adult. Adolescent food habits and physical activity patterns are an important concern in the present accelerated nutrition transition. Healthy food choices combined with regular physical activity help to prevent a variety of chronic diseases such as obesity, high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, diabetes, heart disease, and certain cancers. The objective of this study was to identify the description of eating habits, breakfast skipping, frequent snacking and about the behavior of money management, to Analyze the adequacy of macro and micronutrients, to analyze the nutritional status, to analyze the physical activity level, to analyze the relationship between pocket money versus the family income, family size, food habits including eating habits, breakfast habits, snacking habit and food preferences, and convenient foods. This study was used in a cross-sectional study design and This study was used in a cross-sectional design and the location of the research was the two public high schools in Bogor, SMA Negeri 3 Bogor, Baranangsiang, East Bogor, Bogor city and SMA 1 Leuwiliang, Leuwiliang, Bogor, West Java, Indonesia and the place of the research was selected purposively. The subjects’ study was the students of urban and rural senior high schools in Bogor. The subjects were grade 10th, 11th, and 12th students as well as willing to participate in the study and their age ranges between 10-19 years. Finally, the total number of the subjects of this study were 70 students aging with 16-19 years old. Primary data is obtained through measurement techniques and direct interviews and using a questionnaire. Primary data include: 1) subject characteristics (age, sex, and amount of pocket money), food habits (eating habits, breakfast habits, and snacking habits), food preferences and convenient foods, 2) Family socio-economic characteristics (education, employment, and parents’ income), 3) physical activity level using one day physical activity recall, 4) food recall for 2x24 hour, 5) Anthropometric characteristics (body weight) were obtained from direct measurements using digital scales and height was measured using a stature meter. Based on the results of this study, the average ages of the students were 16-19 years. The majority of urban and rural families were medium-sized families. Based on the results of the study, the majority of the parents from the urban area were finished graduate school while the parents from the rural area were finished high school. The urban subjects had better nutritional status than rural subjects, with 80.0% of urban adolescents having normal nutritional status while 57.1% of rural adolescents have normal nutritional status. Most of the urban adolescents, 45.7% they take their breakfast between 05:00-06:00 whereas the majority of rural adolescents, 54.3% they take their breakfast between 06:00-07:00. Also, the results iii indicated that most of the adolescents both from the urban and rural, they have breakfast before leaving for school, only about 5.7% of urban adolescents and 8.6% of rural adolescents, they don’t have breakfast before leaving for school. About 74.3% and 62.9% of urban and rural adolescents, they spent their pocket for only foods. Around 5.7% and 25.7% of urban and rural adolescents are saving their pocket money so this is indicating that rural adolescents are better than in urban for pocket money management. In fact, the result of this study indicated that rural adolescents both male and female are better than urban adolescents for the behavior of pocket money management. The result of the physical activity of the urban and rural adolescents was different and it indicated that most of the rural participants both male and female had a more inactive physical with 54.3% of rural adolescents are inactive whereas 37.1% of urban adolescents were inactive. According to the sedentary physical activity, about 34.3% of urban adolescents, their physical activity was low (sedentary) while 25.7% of rural adolescents were also sedentary life so the sedentary status indicated that rural adolescents were better than urban adolescent and this indicating some of the rural adolescents walk to the school. The most active students both urban and rural have involved playing of futsal, bicycle cycling and running. A strong positive and negative correlation (r = 0.330 and r = -366) has been observed between the snacking habits and pocket money both in urban and rural adolescents’ snacking. Also, the result indicated that the coefficient of correlation (r) of physical activity and nutritional status of urban and rural students are positive and negative. So a negative low correlation was found in relation to urban adolescents while also a moderate negative correlation was found in urban adolescents.