Fitness of urban elementary school children impact of exercise nutrition and socio economic status

Abstract

Childhood and adolescence are important stages of life, as many physical, biological and psychological changes take place during this stage. There are many contributing factors which plays important role during this growing and developmental stages. Modifiable factors like physical fitness and nutrition are of key importance during these stages. The current study was conducted with the aim to assess the Physical fitness and Nutritional status of elementary school children and to find out its association with socioeconomic status in the Delhi, NCR. Present study also analyzed the effect of exercise and nutritional counselling on their fitness status. Five hundred seventy five (575) school children of age 6-14 years from various schools of Delhi NCR region were screened for inclusion and exclusion criteria. The physical fitness of Children were assessed by Curl up test for abdominal strength, Sit and reach test for flexibility, 4x10 m shuttle run test for agility, 1600 m walk/ run test for cardiovascular endurance. Nutritional Status was assessed by 24 hr. recall test and nutrient intake was calculated with respect to EAR. A total of 559 School children (312 Girls, 247 Boys) were recruited with mean age of 11.32 ± 1.63 years. Large percentage of children from all age groups were falling in Normal category of BMI. But around 14.8- 23.5% children were falling in underweight category. And, around 2.4- 19% children were overweight. it was observed that a large percentage of elementary school children, regardless of age had poor fitness levels Interestingly, it was also observed that the fitness levels of approximately 80-90% of the children belonging to high SCE strata and 70- 78.7% belonging to the mid-low SCE strata were below the 50th percentile across all age groups. Further, a large proportion of children in this study consumed carbohydrates adequately across all age groups and SCE strata. It was also observed that a considerable percentage of the children in this study were exceeding the higher limit of fat intak