title: Studies to determine nutrition behaviour amongst middle school pupils living in the border areas of Poland and the Czech Republic.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  In childhood and adolescence, adequate nutrition is vital for ensuring correct physical, mental and emotional development as well as effective learning ability. Thus, the acquiring of such healthy lifestyle behaviour is also important later in adult health.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To assess and compare the dietary habits of pupils attending middle school in Poland and the Czech Republic, who live in the border regions between these countries.
  
  
  METHODS
  The study tool was a nutrition questionnaire dived into a section on socio-economic status and one on detailed dietary habits. Subjects were 202 pupils recruited from Poland and 202 from the Czech Republic. Statistical analyses were performed by the Statistica Ver. 9.0 software, where the Chi2 test was used to evaluate the significance of differences between the data, taking p <or= 0.5 as the critical value.
  
  
  RESULTS
  There were 47% of pupils eating 4-5 meals daily and 49% and 50% ate breakfast and lunch respectively. Milk or dairy drinks were daily drunk by 24% pupils daily and 14% ate hard or processed cheese. Fish was consumed 1-2 times weekly by 46% subjects and fruit and vegetables were daily eaten by 49% and 36% of pupils respectively.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Pupil's dietary habits were found to be unfavourable in both countries. There were significant differences between the countries tested, especially in how frequently breakfast and lunch were eaten, as well as in the intakes of milk and dairy products and in the consumption of fast-food and sugary drinks.
authors: Department of Human Nutrition, Faculty of Public Health, Medical University of Silesia, Zabrze, Poland. eszczepanska@sum.edu.pl
authors: Elzbieta
authors: E
authors: Szczepańska
authors: Monika
authors: M
authors: Deka
authors: Beata
authors: B
authors: Calyniuk
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior; D018153:Czech Republic; D005247:Feeding Behavior; D005260:Female; D005518:Food Preferences; D015438:Health Behavior; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009752:Nutritional Status; D011044:Poland; D012923:Social Class; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires