The Impact of Healthy Diet on the Physiologicaland Health Indicators of Students

2024 vol 1

The Impact of Healthy Diet on the Physiological and Health Indicators of Students

Hasmik Grigoryan  Armenuhi Harutyunyan

Arevik Babelyan

Summary

Key words: diet, balanced nutrition, nutritional characteristics, obesity, malnutrition, body mass index (BMI), ideal weight

The findings of our study indicate that there are dietary deviations, including behavioral ones, among the students who participated in the survey. There is also a violation of the water balance, the deviation of the body mass index from the norm with 9.5 % of students being overweight and 13.04 % being underweight. Some individuals had blood hemoglobin levels below normal; a possible explanation for this could be a diet deficient of iron-rich foods.

According to the report, 50.5% of students skip breakfast, and 52.4 % don’t have a first meal, which is not good from the perspective of having a healthy diet. Other components, such as meat products, vegetables and fruits, are mandatory in the diet of the majority of respondents – meat products for 53.3 %, vegetables and fruits for 72.4 %, respectively. Other food groups, such as dairy products and seafood, are completely absent from the diet of 14.3 % and 29.5 %, respectively.

46.7% of respondents regularly consume fast food.

The diet of a significant majority of respondents (72.4%) includes various sweets on a daily basis. Only 57.1 % of students who took part in the survey eat regularly in accordance with the physiological needs of the body. 10.5 % of students often overeat, while 53.4 % overeat occasionally. 28.6 % of respondents have worries about gaining too much weight.

DOI: https://di.org/10.58726/27382923-ne2024.1-31

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