Diet, Physical Activity and Body Condition of Young People

The promotion of a healthy lifestyle and nutrition education programs that aim the correction of the improper nutritional habits, present one of the prior principles in the WHO educational strategies for human health.The goal of this study is the development of a database with regard to the nutritional teenagers attitude in its quantitative aspect (food consume ) and qualitative (nutrition style) as a necessary demand for the planning of the nutritional and sanitary education interventions. In this study are enrolled 721 children aged 14-19 years old from the secondary schools district of Tirane (selected according to four categories :sex, age ,economic level and residence zone) This study made possible for the first time the calculation of the average values of the daily energy intake for this age group and evaluation of the diet in qualitative aspects. The values of the daily energy intake are lower that the recommended norms of the WHO, mainly in the males/ rural zones and with a tendency for a non equilibrated nutrition in the population with scarce economic level. The diet is a typical Mediterranean one with some light deviations with regard to the frequent consumes of the bread, milk and fish according to the recommended values.