Dietary pattern and food intake habit of the underprivileged children residing in the urban slums

Objective: Nutritional status directly affects the growing up of children in terms of physical and mental development. In the urban slums the underprivileged children lag behind the basic necessary amount of food and nutrition which is likely to lead to their ill development. This study was undertaken to investigate the dietary food intake pattern among urban slum dwelling children attending schools Dhaka city and to examine the association with various social factors. Material & Methods: This study is a cross-sectional study among 396 school going children who are residents of slums in different parts of Dhaka Metropolitan city. Findings: The age of the children were categorized into three age groups; Mean age for the children of age group-1 was 6.51 (+/- 1.01) years, for the age group-2 was 9.24 (+/- 1.09) years and for the age group-3 was 12.5 (+/- 0.91) years. In 77.8 % of the cases the child gets three meals per day but inadequate in amount. In most of the cases the common foods were rice, lentil, potato and green leafy vegetables. The food frequencies reported by the children were; eggs: 1.4 times per week, milk: 1.2 times per week, meat: 0.4 times per week, fish: 2.8 times per week and fruits 2.9 times per week. Those children from families with lower incomes and less educated parents had a dietary pattern which tended to be poor regarding egg, milk, meat and fruit. Conclusion: The diets of these urban slum school children were inadequate for macronutrients and micronutrient, which is a danger for significant nutritional and health implications. The need to develop healthy food supply and habits should be emphasized.