Revista de trastornos alimentarios y nutricionales

Nutritional Status, Dietary Profile and Selected Lifestyle Attributes of Adolescents and Early Adults in Benghazi, Libya

Vedavalli Sachithananthan, Mohammed Buzgeia, Fadwa Awad, Rema Omran and Amna Fara

Nutritional Status, Dietary Profile and Selected Lifestyle Attributes of Adolescents and Early Adults in Benghazi, Libya

Adolescents have typically been considered a high-risk group for poor health, and often receive few healthcare resources and scarce attention. However this approach ignores the fact that many health problems such as obesity, diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular problems in later life can be improved or avoided by adopting healthy lifestyle habits in adolescence such as improving physical activity, consuming balanced diet and nutrition counselling in schools and colleges. Failure to consume adequate diet at this time can potentially retard physical growth, intellectual capacity and poor scholastic performance and delay sexual maturation.