Impact of dietary intervention program on nutritional knowledge of adolescent girls in Srinagar city of Jammu and Kashmir

Adolescents need excellent nutrition both to develop to their complete ability and to lower their hazard of developing weight problems and persistent illnesses in early life and also later in life. Lack of nutritional knowledge can lead to deficiency diseases in addition to predisposing them to the hazard of obesity and weight problems. The present study thus aimed to assess the nutritional knowledge of adolescent girls and also implement dietary intervention program to improve their diet related habits and practices. A total of 400 adolescent girls were randomly take from various government and private schools of District Srinagar of J&K . The results of the study indicated that the diets of majority of girls were adequate in calories, proteins, fats, vitamin C, however were found deficient in iron and calcium. Nutrition education was given to the girls which not only increased their intakes of micronutrients but also increased their diet related knowledge. Mean nutritional knowledge scores increased significantly from 4.93 to 9.18. schools can adopt this information to the benefit of most vulnerable group and include a special curriculum on food and nutrition