The Light Millennium, Charitable Global Human Advancement Organization, proudly presents the below research by Vihini S. Mahawithanage & Neja Senpali, Whyteleafe Junior Researchers (Sri Lanka), in support of the 2022 #WorldScienceDay theme’s #BasicSciencesForSustainableDevelopment, along with encouraging students toward further research-based projects.

The theme of World Science Day on 10 November 2022 is Basic Sciences for Sustainable Development. It is being celebrated within the International Year of Basic Sciences for Sustainable Development, which kicked off on 8 July 2022. Scientists, science communicators, and science enthusiasts are encouraged to prepare their events to celebrate #WorldScienceDay.
“The annual observance of the International Week of Science and Peace, 9-15 November (A/RES/43/61), is making an important contribution to the promotion of peace. The Week encourages greater academic exchanges on a subject of universal importance while also generating greater awareness of the relationship of science and peace among the general public. Based on observances of Science and Peace Week to date, it may be expected that participation each year will increase, contributing to greater international understanding and opportunities for co-operation in the applications of science for the promotion of peace throughout the year.” #ScienceForDevelopmentAndPeace 
Source: https://www.un.org/en/observances/world-science-day/week

Whyteleafe Junior Researchers Series

Children’s knowledge of Food
by Vihini S. Mahawithanage & Neja Senpali, Whyteleafe Junior Researchers

29.09.2022

Introduction

Nutrition is the study of food and how it works in your body. Nutrition includes all the stuff that’s in your food, such as vitamins, protein, fat, and more. It’s important to eat a variety of food, including fruits, vegetables, dairy products, and grains.

Carbohydrates– Rice, Bread, Potato, etc.           

Protein – Egg, Cheese, Yogurt, etc.

Dairy Products – cheese, Butter, Milk, etc.

Fruits – Mango, Apple, Orange, etc.

Vegetables – Carrots, Beans, Tomatoes, etc.

Meat and Fish – meats – Beef, pork, Chicken, prawns, crab, lobster, mussels, oysters, scallops, and clams.

Food is one of the basic human needs. We can do food preservation. There are so many methods to keep, by adding salt, keeping in refrigerator, adding sugar, etc. ways.

Eating is the consumption of food to sustain life. The gathering, preparation, storage, and presentation of food have necessarily been a focus of human activity.

Nearly 1 in 3 children is overweight or obese. Despite all the focus on kids being overweight and obese, many parents are still confused, especially when it comes to what kids eat.

Whether you have a toddler or a teen, nutrition is important to his or her physical and mental development.

In the baby stages of life, it’s almost all about the milk — whether it’s breast milk, formula, or a combination of the two. Breast milk or formula will provide.

Explanation of research question and objectives

Our research questions:

What knowledge of nutrition do the children have?

How do we determine the status of nutrition knowledge of 12 to15-year-olds?

Objectives:

To examine how many children have food knowledge and know about what they eat.

Theoretical Framework

We read in a magazine where Bethenny Frankel said, your diet is a bank account. Good food choices are good investments.

Adella Davis stated that you should eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper.

Materials and Methods

We wanted to do this because lots of our friends are very fat or very thin, and we want to know why they get too fatter or thinner.

There are seven nutritional groups: carbohydrates, proteins, fruits, vegetables, milk and dairy products, oily food, and sugary food.

We made questionnaires to test their knowledge about food.

We gave them to our friends in school, class, and neighbours.

We took information for the analysis using questionnaires from:

Websites like Wikipedia, sources like Kindle (food knowledge, food, etc.), using web pages like Google, Microsoft, etc.

Results

We found that a lot of children like to eat out rather than homemade food, and only a few like to eat with a healthy diet.

We also discovered that only a few like to eat healthy food according to the food guide pyramid and most of them eat out of home. For example, from restaurants and hotels etc.

Finally, some did not want to eat homemade food but some children there like to eat homemade and both.

Discussions

After we distributed the questionnaires, they mostly said that they eat less nutritional food like cake, short eats, cupcakes, chocolate, candy, etc.

But some students eat healthy food like vegetables, fruits, green leaves, less sugar food, less oily food, etc.

This research is important because it helps to,

• Educate general public [Colombo] health.
• Limit unhealthy food advertisements on tv, in newspapers, leaflets, magazines, etc.
• Conduct research on the effect of food knowledge about nutrition on children.

Limitations

This study was done only with 30 children living in the Colombo district. Therefore, this research is limited to urban areas.

Conclusion

We have to check the nutrition knowledge of children. We found that a lot of children are eating from shops (mostly eating unhealthy food) and that this causes obesity.

We concluded that a lot of our friends get fat and ill because they constantly eat unhealthy food, from restaurants.

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Whyteleafe Academy

Dedicated to the 2022 World Science Day & International Week of Science and Peace by The Light Millennium, Charitable Global Human Advancement Organization (LMGlobal.Org; 2001, New York); associated with the United Nations Department of Global Communications (formerly, UN.DPI) since 2005. www.lmglobal.org

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