Abstract
India continues to face an epidemic of malnutrition: data from national surveys are a constant reminder of the unacceptably high levels of underweight, stunting, and wasting among children aged 0–5 years of age. Despite the well-known impacts of malnutrition on the cognitive, psycho-motor and social development of children, the tracking and monitoring of common indicators of malnutrition has been done only intermittently, and has been confined to the under 5-year age group. Information on the nutritional status of older children of primary school-going age is dependent on data generated by small research studies and provides a patchy picture of the nutritional needs of children in a critical age group, where nutritional deficits might have a seriously deleterious impact on their ability to learn and benefit from schooling. This book arose out of a primary research study conducted in three districts of Karnataka, India: Do we know what they eat, and why? A Study on Dietary Adequacy and Impact of Cultural Beliefs on Dietary Choice of Primary School Children in Rural Karnataka, India. We bring together the available evidence in the literature, along with additional information and insights gleaned from the study, to analyze the problem of nutritional deficiencies among school-going children. The book explores some of the complexities of measuring and assessing both nutritional deficiency and dietary choice, and offers insights on how some of the complexities can be resolved in the Indian context. The book ends by making recommendations to address the challenges of enhancing nutritional outcomes for school-going children at various levels—the family, school, community, programs, and policies - to confront this serious issue.
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Rao Seshadri, S., Ramakrishna, J. (2018). Nutritional Status of School-Going Children: What Do We Know?. In: Nutritional Adequacy, Diversity and Choice Among Primary School Children. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-3470-1_1
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