Nutritional status of Lebanese school children from different socioeconomic backgrounds*

Supported by a grant from Kuwait Society for advancement of Arab children. Correspondence to Dr. Nahla Baba, Agriculture and Food Sciences, American University of Beirut, 850 3rd Avenue No. 18, New York, NY 10022, USA

This paper examines the nutritional status of school children in private and public schools in West Beirut. The objectives of the study were to measure the impact of the socio‐economic status on the magnitude and severity of malnutrition in school children. Anthropometric data (height and weight) were collected on 400 children from private and public schools. The private schools were considered to house children from high socio‐economic status whereas the public schools children were considered as coming from a low socio‐economic background.

The indices studied were height for age, weight for height and weight for age, the cutoff point to indicate malnutrition was taken as values below ISD of a reference population. The United States National Center for Health Statistics Standards (NCHS) were used.

Results showed that children classified as low socio‐economic status (public schools) had low weight for age and height for age indices indicating higher occurrence of stunting and wasting in that population as compared to children from high socio‐economic status (private schools).

Key words:

• Nutritional status
• Beirut
• anthropometry
• socio‐economic status

Notes

Supported by a grant from Kuwait Society for advancement of Arab children. Correspondence to Dr. Nahla Baba, Agriculture and Food Sciences, American University of Beirut, 850 3rd Avenue No. 18, New York, NY 10022, USA