Educating South African Children about Obesity, Undernutrition, and Overweight: Evaluating the Life Orientation CAPS Curriculum

Aim: This study measured and assessed the prevalence of overweight, obesity, and nutritional deficiency amongst learners in a public school in Durban Central, South Africa.

Methods: Ninety learners in Grade 8 were assessed before and after an intervention of nutrition education regarding their body mass index (BMI) and food intake. Two of the instruments used for data collection were the 24-hour food recall questionnaire and the Quantified Food Frequency Questionnaire (QFFQ), designed by the South African Medical Research Council and compiled by Steyn & Senekal (1991) to gain data on food intake over a period. Nutrient intake was determined using the South African Food Data System (SAFOODS) Food Composition Database [1]. ANOVA tests were used to determine significant differences in food intake between the first and second set of measurements.

Results: The prevalence of underweight, overweight, and obesity during session one was 23.3%, 14.5%, and 12.2%, with no significant change in session two. The daily kilojoule intake dropped from 17209.24 kJ in session one to 13455.39 kJ in session two for the QFFQ (p = 0.0002). The total amount of carbohydrates decreased from session one to session two, from 517.82 to 405.38 (p = 0.0003). Although the intervention successfully reduced the kilojoule intake of the participants, the kilojoule intake remains higher than the recommended Dietary Reference Intake (DRI) of 8665 kJ for the age group of the participants.

Conclusion: The study provides evidence that the school environment is ideal for trained teachers to provide unbiased, objective, and appropriate information that learners can relate to and apply in daily life. The nutrition programme in this study was based on scientific evidence and proved to be phenomenally successful in that a stable balance in the number of obese and overweight learners in session one and two was maintained, despite the challenges and changes that the grade eight learners were exposed to in a new environment. Based on this study, recommendations are made for revising the national curriculum as it applies to nutrition education at all levels.