Vol 15, Issue 11, 2022 Online - 2455-3891 Print - 0974-2441 A NUTRITIONAL STUDY OF TRIBAL AND NON-TRIBAL CHILDREN IN THE UDAIPUR REGION NISHA TRIPATHI 1 *, SUMAN JAIN 2 , SONAL SOGANI 2 , SANDEEP BHATNAGAR 3 , MANI BHATNAGAR 4 * 1 Department of Biochemistry, Pacific Medical College and Hospital, Udaipur, Rajasthan, India. 2 Department of Biochemistry, Pacific Institute of Medical sciences, Udaipur, Rajasthan, India. 3 Department of General Medicine, Paras JK Hospital, Udaipur, Rajasthan, India. 4 Department of Pediatrics, Paras JK Hospital, Udaipur, Rajasthan, India. Email: sumannemijain@gmail.com Received: 12 September 2022, Revised and Accepted: 20 October 2022 ABSTRACT Objective: There is an evidence that nutrition has a significant impact on children’s development, adult health, and senescence. It is also known to have an impact on one’s physical and mental faculties. Malnutrition is now understood to be the root cause of a significant variety of health issues. To compare the nutritional condition of 300 (tribal and nontribal) children living in the Udaipur region, a dietary survey was conducted. Methods: In the present study, 300 tribal and non-tribal children between the ages of 1 and 12 were chosen for a dietary survey to evaluate their nutritional status. The survey was conducted using a questionnaire. Results and Conclusion: The statistics between tribal and non-tribal children showed that calorie, protein, fat, and carbohydrate intake was lower in the tribal children. When we compared the data between tribal and non-tribal children, we found that the non-tribal children’s calorie, protein, fat, and carbohydrate intake was not superior. Ascorbic acid and B-carotene intake among non-tribals is also less than that advised by the ICMR and is approximately twice as low as that among their tribal counterparts. The statistics on tribal and non-tribal children made it abundantly evident that nutritional intake is low that consumption of fat among dense nutrients is significantly lower and that intake of antioxidant nutrients such as ascorbic acid and beta-carotene is similarly poor. Keywords: Tribal, Non-tribal, Nutrition, Nutrient antioxidant, Vitamins. INTRODUCTION Man and diet are intimately and inextricably linked. Energy must be provided by oxygen to arrange multiple anatomical and physiological functions through metabolic reactions, and humans, who are heterotrophs, depend on food for all of these activities. It is not overstated to say that nutrition and oxygen play a significant role in the evolution, development, sustenance, and preservation of man. Although the body possesses a vast supply of antioxidants, only a small portion of the latter is mistakenly or consciously diverted to create reactive oxygen species, which are highly reactive [1-3] and must thus be constantly managed. The typical animal life span has been reported to improve by 13–30% by optimizing body with these antioxidants, demonstrating the importance of nutritional antioxidants among these antioxidants [4]. Antioxidant intake has been found to be low in the majority of affluent populations and egregiously low in poor populations, which may tip the oxidant/antioxidant balance and create a pro-oxidant environment with a number of negative effects. These effects are anticipated to worsen if malnutrition or over nutrition is present [5-7]. The developmentally staged children are most vulnerable to these alterations. According to several of our prior investigations, undernutrition is rife in this area [7,8]. In the present study, the nutrient proteins, carbohydrates, lipids and nutrient antioxidant ascorbic acid, and beta-carotene were looked that how mush are consumed by tribal and non-tribal children in various age groups. METHODS The study was carried out in Biochemistr department with the consent of the parents of the children participating in the study. To determine the daily calorie, fat, protein, carbohydrate, and vitamin intake among 300 tribal and non-tribal children, an oral questionnaire survey was done. The groups were formed and divided as Group 1 (4-and years), Group 2 (7.1–10 years, and Group 3 (10.1–13 years). The data were computed as per Gopalan et al. ICMR booklet, after recording the daily food consumption on a proforma that had been tested in advance [9,10]. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Children are more susceptible to nutrition marketing because they are in a growing stage. In the third world, at this time when demands are high owing to growth, diets are frequently insufficient and unbalanced because of poverty and a lack of suitable foods [11]. Parental ignorance and misconceptions about taboos, prejudices, and culinary customs further exacerbate the issue. In addition, it is a time of ongoing stress, bacterial, viral, and parasitic illnesses. In this sense, the survey results of the youngsters in this series paint a bleak picture. Only 12% of children were normal, according to a NIN survey conducted between December 2021 and July 2022, while 67% of youngsters had some form of malnutrition. A follow-up survey conducted in 1988–1990 revealed that 80.1% of children were underweight [12]. However, neither of these surveys included any tribal children, whose manner of life differs greatly from that of non-tribal people. The study of Pinki et al. 1997 done on tribal children showed that in respective to calories, fat, carbohydrate, ascorbic acid, and b-carotene, they were 100% deficient and 90% in protein. In the study, the results showed 80% calories deficiency [13]. In India, there are more than 80 million tribal people. They remain ingrained in their own civilization and continue to rank as backward on the politico-socio-economic scale because they are intrinsically unwilling to embrace the changes brought about by modernization. Typically, they are barely able to survive. For this reason, native peoples are seen as a bridge between prehistoric and modern man and offer a wealth of useful data for scientific interpretations. Social © 2022 The Authors. Published by Innovare Academic Sciences Pvt Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/) DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.22159/ajpcr.2022v15i11.46347. Journal homepage: https://innovareacademics.in/journals/index.php/ajpcr Research Article