Nutritional knowledge and health, the Group of young students in physical education in Morocco

Background and objectives: According to WHO, adolescence is the period of human growth and development that occurs between childhood and adulthood. It represents a critical transition period in life and is characterized by a significant rate of growth and change. A bad default or excess diet can distort this process over time. The changes that Morocco has experienced in recent decades with globalization reveal several behaviors affecting even the lifestyle of individuals and family groups, including eating habits. The increasingly early manifestation of certain profile imbalances in young people, such as obesity or overweight, shows the importance of vigilance and education of children and adolescents in relation to lifestyle habits. However, our objective through this study is to evaluate the effect of education and nutritional knowledge of school children (n: 221) on their morphological and energy profiles (the energy balance in nutritional intake and energy expenditure) during a period of 20 weeks of study, in order to identify the eating behaviors and their effect on the physical activity of these young adolescents aged "15 to 18 years" made up mainly of pupils belonging to public schools in the city of Casablanca with an average physical practice of 2 to 3 hours per week. Materials and methods: this is a sample of 221 school children including 120 girls and 101 boys aged (16 ± 0.8 years), height (1.67 ± 0.34 m), weight (65 ± 0. 12 kg), BMI (23). A self-administered dietary questionnaire was used to assess daily caloric intake, macronutrient distribution and antioxidant vitamin intake. Daily energy expenditure was evaluated by the factorial method. We studied nutritional knowledge using a Validated NSKQ questionnaire. As far as physical performance is concerned, several field-validated tests have been implemented to assess their motor skills and abilities (shuttle test for VO2max, 100 speed test and 1500 m endurance test). Results: The results show that corpulence according to gender for girls (n=120) grade I undernutrition (n=9), grade II undernutrition (n=1), grade III undernutrition (n=1), normal (n=88), moderate Grade I obesity (n=3), overweight (n=18), And for boys (n=101): Grade I undernutrition (n=15), Grade II undernutrition (n =1), grade III malnutrition (n=2), normal (n=76), moderate Grade I obesity (n=2), overweight (n=5). Students who were of normal build achieved higher scores than those who were not (p < 0.05). The daily caloric intake is