Nutritional adequacy of meals offered and consumed by soldiers of the Brazilian Army

Abstract

A B S T R A C T ObjectiveThe purpose of this research is to evaluate the nutritional adequacy of meals served and consumed by soldiers in a construction unit (army and civil employees) of the Brazilian Army Construction. MethodsBody mass index, fat percentage (bioimpedance) and the physical activity level were evaluated. Furthermore, the nutritional evaluation of meals offered and consumed by soldiers was evaluated, in relation to the macronutrients, sodium, fibers and total energetic value. ResultsThrough the results, we verified that 76% of the soldiers were eutrophic, and that the population's energetic requirement was approximately 3.600 kcal. We verified that the energetic consumption of this population was below the required value (3.200 kcal) and with inadequacy regarding the distribution of macronutrients: percentage of carbohydrates above the recommended one, percentage of lipid below the minimum value recommended and percentage of proteins within the recommendation. Moreover, the amount of fibers was in accordance to the standards; however, there was an excessive amount of sodium, which may put this population in danger.

Military Physical Training, Muscular Strength, and Body Composition of Brazilian Military Personnel

“…In another study in a sample of 92 soldiers, with a mean age of 20 (± 1.8) years, performed by Botelho et al, 14 the percentage of fat obtained was 13.8 (± 5.1)%. Polito 15 also verified that there was a significant reduction in the BFP and reduction in the WC, after subjects underwent 12 weeks of weight training, 3 times a week, composed of 10 exercises of 2 sets of 10-20 repetitions.…”

Dietary Assessment Methods in Military and Veteran Populations: A Scoping Review

“…Africa included studies from Cameroon (n = 1, 1%) [75], and South Africa (n = 1, 1%) [87]. In South America two studies were undertaken in Brazil (2%) [8,35].…”

“…One study did not report on participant numbers [45]. Forty-five of the 89 studies included male personnel (51%) [ The military population most frequently studied, in descending order, was the army with n = 48 (54%) [2,6,7,[21][22][23][24][29][30][31][32]34,35,[37][38][39][40][43][44][45][46][47][48][50][51][52][53][56][57][58][59][60][61][62]66,[70][71][72][73]76,77,82,84,88,89], followed by veterans n = 18 (20%) [20,[90][91]…”

“…The population types that included intervention studies were army (n = 9) [7,21,32,38,51,53,56,84,89], air force (n = 3) [36,49,54], veterans (n = 1) [103], National Guard (n = 1) [86], and Navy Marines (n = 1) [39]. The most commonly studied type of military personnel in included studies were soldiers (n = 28, 31%) [6,7,22,24,29,32,35,37,38,45,46,48,50,51,53,56,57,59,62,[70][71][72][73][74]76,88] followed by veterans (n = 14, 16%) [20,[94][95][96][97][98][99][100]…”

“…Seventy three of 89 studies (82%) [2,[6][7][8][20][21][22][23][24][25][29][30][31][32][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][42][43][44][46][47][48][49][51][52][53][54][55][56][57]59,61,[63][64][65][66]70,[72][73][74][75][76][77]79,[81][82][83]…”