Relationship between food consumption, nutritional status and school performance

Introduction: Adequate feeding during childhood and adolescence is extremely important, due to its act directly on physical and cognitive development. Objective: To verify the relationship between dietary intake and nutritional status with school performance. Methods: It is an observational, quantitative and cross-sectional study of 134 students aged 9 to 11 years. The nutritional status was measured using the Body Mass Index by age and gender, and food consumption was assessed through the 3-day Dietary Recall. For the knowledge of the school performance, the report cards of 2016 were consulted. A questionnaire was used to collect data regarding the marital status. Results: Regarding nutritional status, 59,7% of the students presented eutrophy, 18,7% overweight, 15,6% obesity and 6,0% underweight. The consumption of calcium (p<0,001) and iron (p<0,001) were significantly below the values recommended by the Dietary Reference Intakes. Obese children consumed significantly more lipids (p=0,026) and calories (p=0,003) than the other students. The participation of ultra processed foods represented 35.50% of the total energy value, with a positive correlation between their consumption and the amount of calories consumed (p=0,022) and inverse correlation with zinc intake (p=0,007). Conclusion: There was no significant association between dietary intake and nutritional status with school performance, but it was found that the marital status of the parents was associated with student performance, the children of married parents had a higher educational achievement than the children of separated parents.