Author(s): Ruchi Sen and Dr. Sarla Lakhawat

Abstract:
Adolescent girls are particularly vulnerable to malnutrition because they are growing faster than at any time after their first year of life. Nutrition as most important aspect of life, It not only helps individual to live a sound and healthy life but also guide to cater different nutritional problems. So it is important to assess the nutritional status of adolescent girls to make them aware and implement different nutritional programs. In this context study was conducted with the objective to assess the nutritional status of rural and urban adolescent girls (16-17 years). The study was conducted in four schools. Two schools from Udaipur city and two schools from ‘Thoor’ and ‘Madar’ village which comes under the Badgaon Panchayat Samiti were selected. Sixty-sixty adolescent girls were selected for nutritional assessment from schools. Nutritional status was assessed by the help of self-structured questionnaire. Dietary intake of the respondents was collected using 24 hour recall method. Anthropometric measurements like height and weight provide important clues about health and nutritional well- being. The mean height of rural respondent’s was154.68±5.29 cm at survey and urban respondent was 159.53±6.53 cm at survey. The mean weight of rural respondents was 44.16±6.25 kg and the mean weight of urban respondent was 49.36±8.32 kg. 13.33 percent rural respondents and 10 percent urban respondents were lying in category of underweight. In the present study 40 percent of rural respondents and 66.66 percent of urban respondent had normal weight. Further‘t’ values were calculated between the rural and urban nutrient intake and RDA which revealed that consumption of nutrients comparatively lower than RDA in both rural and urban adolescent girls.