Author(s): Simran Sanjay Khandagale, Dr. Rekha Battalwar, Dr. Jagmeet Madan, Shobha A Udipi and Rama A Vaidya

Abstract:
Introduction: The dietary patterns of adolescents and youth has changed with time. Due to lack of diversity in their diets, adolescents miss out on various essential nutrients and phytochemicals. Phytochemicals are bioactive non nutrient chemicals found in plant sources but monitoring the intake is impractical and expensive and hence McCarty has proposed the concept of phytochemical Index (PI). According to the reviews, the best PI score is 100 that is achieved through a vegan diet. Objective:To study the nutrient pattern of adolescents and youth in correlation with the recommended dietary intake and to assess the dietary phytochemical index score of their diets. Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted in Mumbai on 239 subjects aged 17years to 25 years with the mean age of 19 years. Sample included 75% (n=178) of females and 25% (n=61) of male subjects. The tool used was a questionnaire that included Demographic, Anthropometric details and one day 24 hours diet record. 22 nutrients and dietary PI was calculated according to gender, age and body mass index (BMI). Student t-test and ANOVA was used to study the data. The data is expressed as mean ± standard deviation. Results and Discussion: The carbohydrate consumption was found to be higher among the younger subjects i.e aged less than 20years (p= 0.06). The consumption of alpha tocopherol and magnesium was higher among the older subjects i.e aged more than 20years with a high standard statistical significant difference (p= 0.001, p= 0.01). The dietary PI score was better among the older subjects (mean PI of females was 51.9 and of males was 47.1) than the younger subjects (mean PI of females was 46.1 and of males was 45.5). The consumption of nuts and seeds was seen to be high among the older with a high statistically significant difference (p = 0.017). Conclusion: The macro nutrient pattern across age group was found to be better among the younger subjects and the pattern of micro nutrients was seen to be better in the older subjects. The dietary PI score was found to be lower, almost 50% of the best score considered among all the subjects. The PI score improves with age and a better score was found in the older subjects.

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