OTAGO CHILDREN

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 151, 29 June 1938, Page 19

OTAGO CHILDREN

DAILY "DIET" INVESTIGATED

An investigation was conducted about two years ago into the ordinary daily diet of children attending the various primary schools in the Otago district, and the results of that investigation are embodied in a report Pr®" pared by the school medical officer (Dr. Grace Stevenson) and embodied in the Otago Education report for 1937. All the children in the upper departments of the Dunedin city elementary schools were asked to write down what they had eaten for breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper upon Tuesday, August 18, 1936, and again upon Wednesday, September 22, 1936. Dr. Stevenson states each meal was re- j corded upon a separate piece of paper, j neither school nor name being inserted. The children were not told the reason of the request, but given the record as a memory or writing test. On Tuesday afternoon the children were asked to write down what they had had for breakfast and dinner on that day. On the Wednesday morning the children were asked to record what

they had had for tea and supper on the previous day. If no supper or other meal was taken it was noted. The total meals available for analysis were: August and September; Breakfast 3643, dinner 3851, tea 3699, supper 3536. . . Discussing the percentages of certain items in the diet table Stevenson says it is to be noted that bread ana butter, and chiefly in the form of toast and butter, form part of 80 per cent, of the breakfasts, and that cereals form part of '70 per cent, of the breakfasts. Potatoes, meat, and vegetables formed each part of 51 per cent, of the dinners. The fact that vegetables formed part of 50 per cent, of the dinners is promising. Potatoes and meat, and bread and butter, form each practically 50 per cent, of the teas. SUPPER A VARIABLE MEAL.

It has to be considered that many children have a light meal at midday and the main meal at tea time, dinner, or high tea. Supper is a variable meal; with some children no supper was recorded, otljers recorded an amazingly heavy meal. More children had. eupj per than was anticipated. Tea, though partaken too frequently, did not demonstrate sucti a high percentage at any of the meals as one is led to believe. „ . . , A study of the table shows that fish, eggs, cheese, fruit, vegetables, soup, milk, and pudding do not appear as frequently as desirable. The milk consumption is promising, and there is no doubt that the milk propaganda of late years—the milk in schools—must have had an influence upon these figures. Cheese, fish, and soup have an evidently low percentage. The high percentage of cereals may have an association with the Scotch ancestry or the community, but included in this are all kinds of patent breakfast cereal foods, some of little nutritive value. Chiefly home-cooking was practised. Considering the nutrition of 2356 of thesechildren in the upper departments, 10.5 per cent, were classified in a condition of general debility; 36.5 per cent had carious teeth; 4.5 per cent, were in a condition of subnormal nutrition; and 16 per cent, were in a condition of malnutrition.