A Study on the Nutritional Status of the Children and the Household Food and Nutrients Consumption Level in Rural Farm Household

농촌가구의 식품 및 영양소 섭취수준과 가구내 어린이의 건강상태에 대하여

It has been a long tradition in the field of nutrition that the degree of malnutrition in a community used to be estimated by the degree of the adequacy of nutrients consumption in the households. The adequacy of nutrient consumption in the households then used to be applied to estimate the degree of malnutrition of the children. Such a practice is theoretically acceptable in the community where the food sharing within the household is individual serving style such as in European countries. However, the community where the dietary habit in the household is communal such as in Korea, the estimation of single serving portion from household consumption is quite uncertain. Because of such an uncertainty this study is intended to test the validity of the household food consumption level as an indication of nutritional status of the children in the rural farm households in Korea. The date from the household consumption survey in 1982 by the Korean Rural Nutrition Institute has been used for the analysis of food consumption levels of the households. The survey on the nutritional status of children of 127 preschool children from 78 farm households, has been conducted during May 1983. The nutritional status of the children has been directly measured by weight, height, skinfold thickness, haemoglobin, haematocrit and morbidity of influenza and diarrhoea. The analysis has been conducted to distinguish the differences in prevalence of malnutrition of children from the estimated of household consumption and that of from the direct measurement of nutritional status of children. The results show that the degree of malnutrition of the estimated by the household consumption level has not related with the prevalence of malnutrition by the direct measures of nutritional status of the children. Therefore, the validity of household consumption level as an indication of nutrional status in a same household is quite uncertain for the population studied.