Nutritional status and frequency of fruit and vegetable consumption in children and adolescents attending social organizations, beneficiaries of the Córdoba Food Bank Foundation

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: The Food Bank Foundation of Cordoba (FBAC) aims to recover food and thus avoid food waste. The recovered food is delivered to beneficiary social organizations (OSB)¹. Currently, the main beneficiaries of food services are children and adolescents². Since 2017, their efforts have been to increase the recovery and delivery of fruits and vegetables¹

OBJETIVOS: to determine the nutritional status and consumption of fruits and vegetables of children and adolescents aged 1 month to 18 years who attend OSB of the FBAC during the years 2022-2023.

MATERIAL AND METHODS: An observational cross-sectional study was carried out on 1533 children and adolescents’ volunteers belonging to 35 OSB. An anthropometric evaluation and nutritional diagnoses were carried out with tables from the Argentine Society of Pediatrics³. In the first instance, an exploratory analysis of the data was carried out based on the calculation of summary measures. Then, the Chi-square test (95% confidence) was applied to assess the association between nutritional diagnosis and the frequency of fruit and vegetable consumption. The work has the approval of the Ethics Committee of the Reina Fabiola University Clinic.

ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS: The work has the approval of the Ethics Committee of the Reina Fabiola University Clinic. The participation of the study subjects was voluntary, after signing an informed consent. The study protocol complies with the Declaration of Helsinki

RESULTS: The mean age of the children and adolescents was 7.91 years (SD ±3.83), of which 42% were at a healthy weight for their age, 47% were overweight or obese, and 11% were malnourished due to deficiency. The age group with the highest proportion of malnutrition due to excess is 7 to 12 years old. An association was found between the nutritional diagnosis of the entire sample and the frequency of fruit consumption (p=0.001) but not with the frequency of vegetable consumption (p=0.18).

CONCLUSIONS: The nutritional status of the children and adolescents reflected high proportions of overweight and obesity. It was also shown that the consumption of foods such as fruits influences the nutritional status of the beneficiaries.