ARE OUR TEENAGERS UNDERNOURISHED IN BOARDING SCHOOLS?

A few weeks ago, a friend and I had a hearty laugh as he narrated how he met a father at the supermarket till whose trolley had four large 1.5kg loaves of bread. It looked like he was hosting a sandwich party at his house. The father, upon noticing the quizzical look on my friend’s face, felt obliged to explain himself.

His explanation started by asking my friend if he had sons. This gentleman has four pre-teen and teenage sons who consume a full loaf of bread each per day. To prevent chaos in the house, each one of them is allocated their own loaf to consume as they please. This is not even the entire kitchen budget for the day in his household.

This got me thinking about a conversation we had with predominantly male friends concerning high school food and they unanimously agreed that they all starved for the four years. Dining hall jokes abound whenever men reminisce about high school. It was regarded as a privilege to be a dining hall prefect as one was deemed to have access to unlimited food.

The typical meals provided range from porridge or a cup of tea made with just a dash of milk for breakfast, a plate of githeri as a standard lunch and a routine dinner of ugali and vegetables which will be accompanied with beans or two pieces of beef twice a week. The descriptions of the potions served left me in stitches.

One described how it was such torture to come from a poor family as they were expected to buy their own bread at breakfast. If you did not have bread, the whole school population would whistle with every sip of the hot tea you took. It was easier to avoid breakfast altogether.

Every parent will attest to the markedly increased kitchen budget during school holidays as teenagers seem to consume enormous amounts of food. They eat as if they are stock-piling for the next school session. Which begs the question, are we underfeeding teenagers in schools?

Adolescence is a period of marked growth spurt for these youngsters. The hormones have come alive and the body is responding with drastic elongation of the bones and the accompanying tissue. Weight gain is rapid as muscles grow to keep up.

On average, a growing adolescent girl needs about 2200 calories while his male counterpart requires 2800 calories. This is not a requirement that many adolescents meet on the lean diet they are forced to make do with in the schools. The growth heavily requires protein as the building block of tissue yet most diets are carbohydrate-based.

When nutrition is discussed in Kenya, it is always viewed in the context of children under five. This makes up a key indicator of health in the country. Could this view be too limited? Are parents working hard to provide a good nutritional start to the children, only to let them fall into neglect once they get to adolescence?

What impact does this have on their future? Are we raising a generation of stunted men and women who fail to achieve their full potential physically? Are we limiting our children from playing basketball in the NBA because they never achieved their full height?

Away from superficial considerations, research findings indicate that long-term effects of undernutrition are quite profound. These include increased susceptibility to accumulate fat mostly in the central region of the body, resulting in truncal obesity in later life. There is consistent lower capacity to burn fat in the body, hence resulting in lower energy expenditure.

In the long run, these undernourished adolescents are prone to insulin resistance, leading to a higher risk of diabetes in adulthood. They are also more likely to develop hypertension and elevated cholesterol, both of which put one at risk of heart attacks and strokes. The end result is an individual with a decreased capacity to handle manual work.

The situation is far worse for those adolescents who experienced malnutrition in early life as they lose an important period in life where good nutrition has a huge impact on reversing the damage they sustained in cognitive development.

As we strive to prevent adolescent obesity, it is paramount that we do not ignore the other end of the spectrum where majority of adolescents in this country fall. It is critical that the policy makers involved in school health are able to give this matter the attention it deserves. It is important to recognize the role of fending off undernutrition in prevention of metabolic diseases.

The Ministry of Education is solely responsible for the well-being of children in boarding schools. This means that it must engage all relevant stakeholders in ensuring the adolescents are adequately fed despite the budgetary constraints. Nothing can replace a good diet. Protein in the diet is not a privilege and neither is fruit.

But over and above the role of the Ministry, parents must get involved in the nutrition of their children. Carting them off to boarding school does not absolve them of the responsibility of ensuring that those you entrust with their care are doing the needful. Adolescence is not an explanation for why your child’s body mass index sits in the underweight category!