Nutritional Assessment of Working Students in the Philippines
Chapter 1
THE PROBLEM and ITS BACKGROUND Just like your body, food is a mixture of chemicals, some of which are essential for normal body function. These essential chemicals are called nutrients. You need nutrients for normal growth and development, for maintaining cells and tissues, for fuel to do physical and metabolic work, and for regulating the hundreds of thousands of body processes that go on inside you every second of everyday. Further, food must provide these nutrients; the body either cannot make these essential nutrients or cannot make enough of them (Bredbenner, 2011).
Nutritional assessment can be helpful in improving one’s health. however, it i imporant to recognize the limitations of these assessments. First , many signs and symptoms of nutritional deficiencies- diarrhea, skin conditions, and fatigue- are not very specific. They may be caused by poor nutrition or by other factors unrelated to nutrition (Bredbenner, 2011). A strong, positive association between income and health status has been documented between countries, within countries at points in time, and within countries over time with economic development. The channels by which better health leads to higher income, and those by which higher income protects health status, are of interest to both researchers and policy makers. However, quantifying the impact of income on health and documenting the mechanisms through which income leads to better health are difficult, given the simultaneous determination of health and income (Case, 2004). In recent years, about one in five children, some 12 to 14 million, have lived in families in which cash income failed to exceed official poverty thresholds. Another one-fifth lived in families whose incomes were no more than twice the poverty threshold. For a small minority of children—4.8% of all children and 15% of children who ever became poor—childhood poverty lasted 10 years or more (Gunn, 1997). The general declining trend in the
THE PROBLEM and ITS BACKGROUND Just like your body, food is a mixture of chemicals, some of which are essential for normal body function. These essential chemicals are called nutrients. You need nutrients for normal growth and development, for maintaining cells and tissues, for fuel to do physical and metabolic work, and for regulating the hundreds of thousands of body processes that go on inside you every second of everyday. Further, food must provide these nutrients; the body either cannot make these essential nutrients or cannot make enough of them (Bredbenner, 2011).
Nutritional assessment can be helpful in improving one’s health. however, it i imporant to recognize the limitations of these assessments. First , many signs and symptoms of nutritional deficiencies- diarrhea, skin conditions, and fatigue- are not very specific. They may be caused by poor nutrition or by other factors unrelated to nutrition (Bredbenner, 2011). A strong, positive association between income and health status has been documented between countries, within countries at points in time, and within countries over time with economic development. The channels by which better health leads to higher income, and those by which higher income protects health status, are of interest to both researchers and policy makers. However, quantifying the impact of income on health and documenting the mechanisms through which income leads to better health are difficult, given the simultaneous determination of health and income (Case, 2004). In recent years, about one in five children, some 12 to 14 million, have lived in families in which cash income failed to exceed official poverty thresholds. Another one-fifth lived in families whose incomes were no more than twice the poverty threshold. For a small minority of children—4.8% of all children and 15% of children who ever became poor—childhood poverty lasted 10 years or more (Gunn, 1997). The general declining trend in the