THE COMPLIANCE OF NUTRITIONAL RATIONS WITH KEY RECOMMENDATIONS ON HEALTHY NUTRITION

Abstract

Purpose: To evaluate the compliance of the actual nutrition of male and female students of Danylo Halytsky Lviv National Medical University with the key recommendations on healthy nutrition. Materials and Methods. An anonymous survey of the 2nd year students of medical and pharmaceutical faculties of Danylo Halytsky Lviv National Medical University (109 female students, 41 male students) and the 4th year students of medical faculty was conducted using Yeltsova’s questionnaire-survey method (L.B. Yeltsova et al., 2017). The searching, social and hygienic, and statistical methods were applied. Results. It was found that a significant part of the respondents had lack healthy eating habits, and the rations of some students generally lack of healthy foods (meat and meat products, fish and seafood, eggs, milk and dairy products, etc.). According to the Brock index, the actual body weight corresponded to the ideal by 42,3% of female students and 58,5% of male students, 57,5% of female students and 41,4% of male students had deviations of the actual body weight from the ideal one. The structure of deviations of the actual body weight from the ideal on among female students as follow: the number with a weak degree of protein-energy deficiency prevailed – 47,6%, 24,6% of female students had a moderate degree of protein-energy deficiency, and 9,2% of female students had a severe degree of protein-energy deficiency. 47,1% of male students had excess body weight within 15–29%. The majority of the surveyed students have low physical activity. Conclusions. A significant part of young students does not adhere to the key recommendations for healthy nutrition and does not pay attention to physical activity. Timely detection of these negative phenomena and implementation of a set of preventive measures will prevent negative changes in the organism caused by nutrition and lifestyle and preserve the full health of the younger generation.