A study of the relationship between diet, iron deficiency anemia and scholastic achievement

Includes bibliographical references (pages 54-57)The health or the school-age child traditionally was\ud believed to be associated with his ability to perform school\ud related activities. This relationship was investigated in\ud a sample of Mexican-American students attending Juanita \ud Elementary School Oxnard California. Measures of diet-\ud disease and scholastic achievement were used.\ud The specific characteristic of nutrient iron estimated\ud from a twenty-four hour recall of foods consumed was used to\ud reflect diet. Levels of blood hemoglobin were used to\ud classify individuals as anemic or non-anemic. Scholastic\ud achievement was estimated by the scores obtained from specific\ud sections of the Stanford Achievement Tests.\ud A total of 1461 fourth1 fifth, and sixth grade students\ud were studied. The relationship between nutrient iron and\ud hemoglobin was investigated and found to be non-significant.\ud One hundred and twenty-one of the 146 students were Mexican-Americans and 23 of those Mexican-American students were\ud found to be anemic using the classification less than or\ud equal to 11.6 grams of hemoglobin. Twenty-three non-anemic\ud Mexican-American students were matched to the anemic\ud students using the criteria: age, sex, grade, and IQ. The\ud relationship between nutrient iron and hemoglobin 1n these\ud 46 students also was found to be non-significant. The relationship between scholastic achievement (as measured by Word\ud Meaning, Paragraph Meaning, Arithmetic Computation, and\ud Arithmetic Concepts) and anemia (as measured by hemoglobin)\ud was found to be non-significant. These findings suggest the need for a more sophisticated approach in studying this problem