Study On The Nutritional Status And Influencing Factors Of Tujia Pupils And Miao Pupils In Xiangxi Tujia And Miao Autonomous Prefecture

Students’ nutrition condition is not only the foundation of health but also theirbasis to completing their education and to growing normally. To study the nutritionaland health status of students is with the meaning of time and special significance. Thisresearch, through the investigation to Tujia and Miao students in primary schools inXiangxi via the measurement of BMI and the standard height-weight measurement,analyzes the characteristics of their nutritional status, ways of the nutritional changesand main problems of existence. It analyzes the inter-relationship between differentenvironmental factors and their nutritional status to seek strategies to improve students’nutrition condition. It aims to provide more angels and thoughts with different ways andfacts for the research on ethnic minority students’ nutrition status in West China and toprovide objective evidences for local policy decision making from the bureaus ofeducation, healthy, PE and so forth.The research result shows that:1. Xiangxi Tujia and Miao pupils’ nutritional statushas been developing into two extremes rapidly. Comparing with schoolgirls, schoolboysare more likely to have malnutrition and obesity problems; the problems of overweightof Tujia girls’ and low weight of Miao girls are more obvious. The positive rate ofmalnutrition and obesity is mainly in cities, and percentage of boys is than half. At thesame time, Tujia boys from countryside have a tougher problem than city boys in termsof the low weigh problem. The changes of detection rate of malnutrition and obesityto Tujia pupils and Miao pupils is mainly from6years old to9years old, from11yearsold to12years, girls are one year earlier than boys,8years old and11years old are theeasy ages for malnutrition and obesity.2. Students who live in a family with threegenerations showed that their malnutrition and obesity detection ratio was the lowest;students whose parents were with relatively high economic and social status showedthat their malnutrition and obesity detection ratio was the highest. Although thestudents’ nutritional status had no obvious connection with their fathers, it had a closeconnection with their mothers.3. Most students couldn’t guarantee the work-outfrequency that they could use one hour for extracurricular sport activities in a day andthree times to work out in a week. These two ethnic pupils were in a bad situation ofgetting breakfast and the three meals a day nutrition intake was not balanced.Meanwhile, the frequency that students had too many high calorie and carbonic aciddrinks and had too much high fat and smoked food is too much was high. Students usedless time for working out. Nearly half of male and female students didn’t have a clearunderstanding on the concept of health and part of students couldn’t judge what kind ofcategory their body shapes belonged to correctly, and parents had been playing aimportant role in getting knowledge on health to the students.Countermeasures: to improve the nutritional status of primary school students fromboth Tujia and Miao ethnic groups in Xiangxi, there must be some methods to help toimprove students’ physical exercise, off school life, nutritional diet structure and theacquirement of health knowledge. Schools should set up sporting programs more oftento cultivate students’ interests in sports; traditional ethnic minority sports should be promoted and developed at school to make these ethnic and folk sports melt into PEclass. To improve and build more basic sporting facilities at schools, to invest more oneducation and to support further education of PE teachers from countryside are thefundamental guarantee to improve the environment for students to work out. Besides, itrequires that each related department should make and implement the food safetymanagement system carefully with a sense of responsibility in the sake of providing agood food using environment for students, should earnestly set up reasonable dietmanagement system, put the food safety management system into practice carefully, tocreate a good eating environment for students. People need to improve students’knowledge of nutrition and health, and actively guide them with right diets and teachthem how to have a good living habit.