"Evaluación del estado nutricional en adolescentes de 15 a 18 años que asisten a los colegios Alejandro Andrade Cordero, ciudad de Girón y Rafael Chico Peñaherrera del cantón Girón en el año 2011"

Abstract

Background: Adolescence is a stage of life characterized by physiological changes and sexual maturation, increased size and weight gain, the child gains at this stage by 20% in height and 50% in body weight that will finally the adult stage of life. Food plays a key role due to high energy requirements at this stage Objective: To evaluate nutritional status in adolescents aged 15 to 18 who attend schools Alejandro Andrade, Rafael Chico Peñaherrera, City of Giron, Canton Giron in 2011. Methodology: A descriptive study of prevalence, participants were assigned randomly to the study, a total of 433 cases were analyzed for the data collection form was used previously validated data collection, the nutritional status was established through the BMI and according to WHO recommendations, the variable was also analyzed by socio-economic survey of unmet basic needs of the INEC. The data were digitized and analyzed in SPSS 19.0, we present the results relative frequencies were used as measures of statistical association and significance. Results: Mean age population stood at 17.09 years with a standard deviation of 0,907 years, how old was presented less prevalence of 15 with 6.7%. Females were the most prevalent with 55.4% in males accounted for 44.6%, 77.8% of the population had normal nutritional status; in nutrition abnormalities in adolescents the most frequent being overweight with 10.9% , then the low weight with 9.9% and obesity accounted for 1.4%. The complete diet was more prevalent in this population, 56.8% of the population resides in urban areas, while 43.2% reside in rural areas. There was a 18.5% of physical inactivity and 25.4% of semi-active. With regard to socioeconomic status 67.7% of the population was located in the lower middle class. Conclusions: The prevalence of overweight, obesity and malnutrition are high, statistically in this study found no association between nutritional status and age, sex, physical activity, socioeconomic status, type of diet or residence.