Avaliação nutricional de pré-escolares e a implementação de um programa educativo nutricional voltado aos servidores da educação infantil

Abstract

The nutritional and nutritional monitoring in childhood is fundamental for a complete growth and development of the individual, and may bring changes of several orders in the future. The participation of the school, in this context, becomes essential, since the child spends an important time of his life in this environment. Objectives: a) To evaluate the nutritional status, food consumption and food and nutritional insecurity of children assisted in Municipal Infant Education Centers (CMEI's), identifying the main predictors that may be associated with the outcomes investigated. b) To carry out training and qualification of educators and nursery school children, verifying possible associations with the nutritional status and socioeconomic status of the investigated servants. Methodology: This is a cross-sectional, populationbased study conducted with 581 preschool children, in which the anthropometric conditions, food consumption and food and nutritional insecurity were investigated. Biochemical parameters of 218 children were evaluated and classification trees were created for the variable ordinal responses of food consumption of food insecurity. The study carried out with the servers had the character of educational intervention. The sample of 224 female employees, from 15 Municipal Centers of Early Childhood Education (CMEI's), participated in two modules of Educational Intervention focused on Health Promotion and Pedagogical Practice in Early Childhood Education. During the modules, demographic, anthropometric, socioeconomic and nutritional knowledge evaluation were investigated. For the analysis of the data, software R version 3.5.1 was used, with descriptive and inductive statistics (paired t Test and Logistic Regression at the 5% level). Results: Nutritional assessment indicated that 23.6% of the children presented with short stature and 22.7% of overweight and 8.8% of obesity. It was observed that most children consumed good quality food (52.2%), but 35.3% still live on the fringes of food and nutritional insecurity. It was verified that 16.9% presented sideropenia and 9.5% low ferritin. Hypervitaminosis A was present in 14.5% of preschool children. Food insecurity was associated with the family economic situation, the number of daily meals and the gestational age of the mother. Inadequate food intake was also associated with the same variables, including the use of infant formulas. Regarding the educational intervention, it was observed that the majority (58%) were overweight / obese, and 46.4% belonged to class B and 36.2% to class C. Regarding nutritional knowledge, the majority of the interviewees (68.3%) showed moderate nutritional knowledge after an educational intervention. There was a statistically significant difference between the mean scores measured before and after the interventions (p<0.001). Conclusion: A relevant portion of the children investigated is under food insecurity and inadequate food consumption and these are related to the familiar socioeconomic level. The proposed food and nutritional intervention program was effective in improving knowledge about food and nutrition of educators.