Nutritional Status of Primary School Children in Haryana

Investigation of human nutrition has a long tradition in Physical anthropology. Though various factors, such as intrauterine conditions, birth order, birth weight in single and multiple pregnancies, parental size, hereditary factors, socio-economic conditions, physical environment, climate, season and disease etc., influence human growth, yet, among whole gamut of factors, nutrition plays a major role in human growth and development. In simplest terms, nutrition has been expressed as the science of nourishing the body property or as the one concerned with the analysis of the effect of food on living organisms. More specifically, nutrition may be defined as the ¿science of food, the nutrients and other substances there in their action, interaction and balance in relationship to health and disease, the process by which the organism ingests, digests, absorbs and utilizes nutrients and disposes of their end products¿ (Robinson, 1978).