Nutritional Status of Households of Rural Field Practice Area of a Tertiary Care Hospital in India

Introduction: In the world as a whole there appears to be a shift from under-nourishment towards over-nourishment making more and more children, adolescents, adults and even elderly to be overweight and obese. Objectives: Study aimed to find out the age and sex wise commonness of over-weight & obesity amongst the families of an overtly different socio-economic environment and its trend in the members of one type of families. Materials & Methods: The undergraduate medical students are supposed to maintain record of individual health (including height & weight) of their own family as well as that of the allotted family. The data collected (record maintained ) by students was utilized to calculate Body Mass Index (BMI). Results: Out of total 291 subjects (males 168; females 123) in students own family 28.9% (28.0%; 30.1%) were overweight and 5.9% (6.0%; 5.7%) were obese. The similar figures for 262 subjects (males 143 & females 119) in the allotted families were 20.2% (18.5%; 20.2%) and 6.5% (4.2%; 8.4%) respectively. The respective percentages of under nourished individuals were 18.6 (17.9; 19.5) and 35.5 (37.8; 32.8). Thus over-nutrition was more common amongst the members of students own families (34.8% vs. 26.7%) and under-nutrition was more common amongst the members of allotted families (35.5% vs. 18.6%) For the years 2000-2003, BMI amongst individuals of students own families the under-nutrition in the age group of 15-24 years amongst males increased from 15.9% to 32.9% and over-nutrition from 13.6% to 20.5%. There was no case of overweight and obesity up to the age of 34 years in the previous analysis which was 2.6% in the present analysis Previous results demonstrated overweight to be more common in males (32.4% Vs. 24.4% in females) and obesity being more common females ( 6.3% Vs. 2.6% in females). Conclusion: Males are increasingly becoming prey of malnutrition (adolescents for under-nutrition and adults & elderly for over-nutrition. More studies covering larger samples are required to be conducted on a more frequent basis