Dietary study on children within an oral health preventive programme (WHO)

The examined material consisted of 184 institutionalized children between 8 to 13 years of age. They have lived in 4 institutes. Emphasis was placed on analyzing the consumption of sucrose containing products, measuring the frequency of intake. The recall method was chosen. Information was obtained by two interviewers in 3 series of interviews, each covering one weekday and one day of the weekend. The solid and liquid sucrose consumption at and between meals was calculated separately. Significant differences were found between consumption at weekends and weekdays. The frequency of the sucrose containing products in solution at meals and the solid and sticky sucrose intake between meals was higher as compared to the other two forms. The average daily frequency of the soluted sucrose at meals, soluted sucrose between meals, solid sucrose at meals, solid sucrose between meals, total solid sucrose and total sucrose consumption ranged between 1.4-2.0, 0.1-0.4, 0.7-1.0, 1.0-1.8, 2.0-2.5 and 3.8-4.6, respectively, in the different institutions. The results showed satisfactorily the different dietary habits in the institutions.