بررسي وضعيت دريافت صبحانه در دانش آموزان و ارتباط آن با برخي از عوامل در شهر سمنان

Study of the breakfast habits and its relationship with some factors in Semnan (Iran) pupils

Introduction: Proper nutrition is one of the essentia! factors to well being for children and adolescents. Meanwhile, breakfast has a major role to supply their requirement nutrients and energy. There are some experimental evidences that suggest that omitting breakfast negatively affects cognitive functioning. This survey was performed to study of breakfast habits and its relationships with some factors in Semnan (Iran) pupils during 2006. Materials and Methods: In this descriptive analytical study, 1193 pupils in different educational grades were selected by the multistage cluster sampling. Data were collected by using a questionnaire and analyzed with Kruskal Wallis, Mann - Whitney and Spearman Coefficient Correlation tests using SPSS software. Results: The mean and standard deviation of age was 12.4±3.3 years old. 50.7% of them were boys and 49.3% were girls. 53.4% of the pupils stated that they always eat breakfast and the rest of them, do not cat irregularly. 4.4% of the pupils said they never eat breakfast. In this study, there was significant relationship between breakfast habits and age (P<.01), educational grade (P<.0001), sex (P<.0001), the time of getting up in the morning (P<.0001), sleeping time at night (P<.0001), the education of pupilʹs mother (P<.04) , the education of pupilʹs father (P<.05), the birth rank (P<.05) and the intervention of pupils in the breakfast planning (P<.0001). According to pupilsʹ breakfast for three continuous days, the relative consumption of bread (2.26), tea (2.20) and cheese (1.66) was higher than other foods, such as milk, walnut, honey, egg, fruit and fruit juice. Conclusion: These finding showed that pupils need to learn more about both irregular intake of breakfast and various intake of nutritious foods and this issue must be considered by different authorities.