Calcium and Vitamin D Related Knowledge in 16-18 Years Old Adolescents: Does Living in Urban or Rural Areas Matter?

Abstract

Background: Vitamin D deficiency is very common in Bangladesh. However, there is scanty of literature available about the knowledge of calcium and vitamin D in 16-18 years old adolescents. The present study has been conducted to determine whether a lack of knowledge exists in this age group about these nutrients and to find out the correlation between students' living in urban or rural areas. Methods: We conducted a cross sectional survey in 2992 students living in urban (62.6%) and rural (37.4%) areas aged between 16-18 years. We followed a 2 step sampling technique. 6 colleges from both urban and rural areas were selected by convenience of the interviewers and then required sample size was calculated from the number of students of each college. The students filled up a questionnaire after a detailed briefing about the study by the interviewer. Result: We found that many of the students, both from urban and rural settings have lack of knowledge and awareness of calcium and vitamin D. Our data suggest that though the rural students are less familiar with vitamin D (p<0.001) and osteoporosis (p=0.0056) than urban students, they exercise a healthy diet in terms of milk consumption (p<0.0001) and engage themselves more in outdoor activities, spend more time in sunlight (p<0.0001) than the urban students. Thus the rural students may require less supplemental support of calcium and/or vitamin D than the urban students (p<0.0001). Conclusion: Urban students are more familiar with the nutrients than the rural students but rural students' lifestyle, diet and food habit may allow them to get a healthier nutritional support and thus to have a better nutritional health than urban students.

Dietary Intake of Schoolchildren and Adolescents in Developing Countries

“…Dietary recall in adolescents is affected by lack of motivation to respond to dietary intake questionnaires, and body image may affect the willingness to report [36]. Assessment of dietary intake of adolescents is influenced by underreporting and misreporting, which is common among overweight and obese adolescents given that dietary intake is a major concern for them [7,37,38,39,40]. …”

“…The duration of recall time, collection techniques and quantification of food intake data were observed to differ to a large extent across different studies. Food frequency questionnaires are the most commonly used method of assessing dietary intake in schoolchildren and adolescents in developing countries [19,20,21,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48]. The use of single 24-hour recalls was also relatively common [5,7,13,42,49,50], while some studies used repeated 24-hour recalls [51,52,53,54,55,56].…”

Assessing Inadequate Dietary Diversity among Bangladeshi Adolescent Girls using COM-B Model: A Review

“…The most common source from where adolescent girls acquire knowledge pertaining to nutritious foods and dietary diversity is academic sources that is textbooks and teachers 21,22 . This is because Bangladesh National Curriculum and Textbook Board (NCTB) includes this information in student's curriculumat school as well as at college (only for science students) 23 . Other important sources are parents, community health workers, and media espoused by non-government organizations' (NGOs) adolescent nutrition intervention 15,22,23 .…”

“…This is because Bangladesh National Curriculum and Textbook Board (NCTB) includes this information in student's curriculumat school as well as at college (only for science students) 23 . Other important sources are parents, community health workers, and media espoused by non-government organizations' (NGOs) adolescent nutrition intervention 15,22,23 .…”