Effects of antenatal nutrition counselling on dietary practices and nutritional status of pregnant women: A quasi-experimental hospital based study

Objective: To assess the effects of nutrition education intervention on dietary practices and nutritional status of pregnant women. Methods: In this quasi-experimental study, 215 pregnant women were enrolled from Gynae OPD, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, Lahore, Pakistan during 2017-18. Dietary practices were assessed using the usual intake form and scoring was done against food guide pyramid. Nutritional status was evaluated by anthropometric measurements and biochemical estimation. In addition to nutrition counselling, each woman was prescribed with supplements commonly used during pregnancy. Dietary habits and nutritional status were reassessed after two months. The women lost to follow up were 21 (9.8%) therefore data obtained from 194 women were subjected to final analysis by using SPSS 20. Results: The age of women ranged between 18 and 38 years. Those who never attended a school were 14.4%; poor 46.0%; and working 3.7%. The comparison between pre- and post-counselling dietary practices showed improvement in the numbers of women taking recommended portions of bread & cereals (79.4% vs. 95.9%, p = <0.001); vegetables (50.5% vs. 64.9%, p = 0.004); milk & dairy products (38.1% vs. 81.4%, p = <0.001); and a reduction in the numbers of women taking recommended portions of meat & bean (100.0% vs. 94.8%, p = 0.002). The frequency of women taking recommended diet as per food guide pyramid improved from 3.1% to 37.1%. Vitamin D status also showed improvement in the numbers of women with normal levels of serum vitamin D (7.1% vs. 33.3%, p = 0.079). Conclusions: Overall, nutrition counseling showed positive effects on nutritional status of pregnant women. Thus, the nutrition counseling must be an essential part of antenatal care for all pregnant women in the setting. doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.36.4.1919 How to cite this:Kaleem R, Adnan M, Nasir M, Rahat T. Effects of antenatal nutrition counselling on dietary practices and nutritional status of pregnant women: A quasi-experimental hospital based study. Pak J Med Sci. 2020;36(4):---------. doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.36.4.1919 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Dietary Assessment for Meals of Nurseries Children in Baghdad City

The objective of this study was to assess the nutritional status of childs of nurseries in Baghdad city so that an early detection of malnutrition cases could be carried out. The results revealed that the daily consumption of food calories, protein, fat and carbohydrate were 1180.5 calories, 27.2gm, 38gm and 180gm, respectively, which were less than the RDA values and the percentages of these nutrients supplied by the food intake were 90.8, 83.7, 87.3 and 90.3%, respectively. It was also demonstrated that the highest percentages of stunting, underweight and wasting, which amounted to 32, 22.7 and 1.5%, respectively, were among those childs who obtained inadequate calories, while the percentages of the forementioned malnutrition cases among those childs who obtained inadequate calories were 7.5, 4.5 and 3%, respectively. The results also pointed out that the general nutritional pattern of the childs food style in this study was strictly and unbalanced due to the lack in food meals recommended to be taken daily of certain main food groups according to the food guide pyramid for young children, such as meats, poultry, fish, eggs, legumes,nuts as well as vegetables and fruits group, otherwise, the food consumed was stricted to milk,yogurt and cheese group ,vegetables and fruits group, bread, rice, and other cereals as well as their products and bakeries. There was anumber of bad food habits among the children of research sample was also observed and was found effect the quantity and quality of food consumed.