RESUMEN
Nutritional inadequacy in high school girls is detrimental as they are the future mothers who will need to cope with nutritional, physical and emotional demands of pregnancy, childbirth and lactation. This study was undertaken to study nutritional knowledge, attitude and practice of adolescent school girls in Kuwait. Prospective study. A governmental high school in Kuwait. Seventy-two school girls aged 15 to 17 years and 12 school teachers were enrolled. A dietary questionnaire on nutritional knowledge, food habits, eating behavior with food frequency sheet was used along with anthropometric measurements. Nutrition knowledge and its source as well as attitudes and practices of subjects. Family was the primary source of knowledge for 45.83% compared to 18.06% school girls who chose the internet. The studied girls showed significantly lower knowledge about different nutrients and nutrients' function compared to their teachers. This deficient knowledge affected the girls' food frequency sheets and limited their choices. Their lifestyle was less than satisfactory in the majority where they preferred sedentary activities. Fortunately, only 15.27% of the studied girls were overweight, 4.17% obese and 2.78% morbidly obese. Although there is an insignificant effect of deficient nutritional knowledge and dietary behavior of the studied high school girls on their physical growth, this deficient nutritional knowledge is likely to have a negative impact on their nutritional status as future mothers. We thus recommend that nutritional education programs should be incorporated within the curriculum intended for school girls in Kuwait