Bayu Permana

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Short Questions for Lecture in Community Nutrition

1. Nutrition is important for all stage of life cycle. Please explain why first 1000
days of life is important?
Answer: because the right nutrition during the first 1000 days (270 days of
pregnancy and first two years of a childs life) has profound impact on a
childs ability to grow, learn, and develop normally. This is a critical window
of time that sets the stage for a persons intellectual development and lifelong
health and also for his brain development. It is a period of enormous potential,
but also enormous vulnerability. Undernutrition is still leading cause of death
of young children throughout the world. For infants and children under the age
of two, the consequences of undernutrition are particularly severe, often
irreversible, and reach far into the future. Also during pregnancy,
undernutrition can have devastating impact on the healthy growth and
development of a child. Babies who are malnourished in the womb have a
higher risk of dying in infancy and are more likely to face lifelong cognitive
and physical deficits and chronic health problems. For children under the age
of two, undernutrition can be life-threatening. It can weaken a childs immune
system and make him or her more susceptible to dying from common illnesses
such as pneumonia, diarrhea, and malaria.
2. Iron requirement is increased during pregnancy. Please explain how would
you advise a married woman to prepare to meet iron requirement for her
pregnancy?
Answer: first I will explain why our body needs iron. Iron is essential for
making hemoglobin which is the protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen
to other cells. It is also helps us to maintain a healthy immune system. After
that, I will explain to a married woman why we need a lot more of this crucial
mineral during pregnancy. Thats because the amount of blood in your body

increases during pregnancy until you have almost 50% more blood than usual,
so you need more iron to make more hemoglobin as I said its function before.
You also need extra iron for your growing baby and placenta, especially in the
second and third trimesters. And I also explain that iron-deficiency anemia
during pregnancy is associated with preterm delivery, low birth weight, and
infant mortality. I will advise to a married woman why she needs to prepare to
meet iron requirement for her pregnancy.
3. What is the best time to introduce the complementary feeding to the infant?
Briefly mention about the energy and nutrient gap.
Answer: the best time to introduce the complementary feeding to the infant is
at 6 months of age. From around six months of age, breast milk alone doesnt
meet the requirements for some nutrients. Exclusive breastfeeding is no longer
sufficient to meet all energy and nutrient needs by itself. Breast milk covers all
energy needs up to 6 months, but after 6 months there is energy gap that needs
to be covered by complementary food. The energy needed in addition to breast
milk is about 200 kcal per day in infants 6-8 months, 300 kcal per day in
infants 9-11 months, and 550 kcal per day in children 12-23 months of age.
The amount of food required to cover the gap increases as the child gets older,
and as the intake of breast milk decreases. Complementary food should
provide sufficient energy, protein, and micronutrients to cover energy and
nutrient gap. The largest gap micronutrients is for iron, so its especially
important that complementary food contain iron.
4. Briefly describe why dietary assessment is important?
Answer: because its the best approach for identifying nutrients that are likely
to either be under or overconsumed by the individual or population.
Reviewing a persons dietary data may suggest risk factors for chronic disease
and help to prevent them. Accurate and consistent measurement of dietary
intake and patterns of eating behavior is important when evaluating the
effectiveness of public health interventions to improve diet and reduce obesity.
5. Briefly explain why inflammation is important for biochemical nutritional
assessment?
Answer: because many plasma nutrients are influenced by infection or tissue
damage. These effects may be passive and the result of changes in blood
volume and capillary permeability. They may also be the direct effect of

metabolic alterations that depress or increase the concentration of a nutrient or

metabolic in the plasma. Where the nutrient or metabolite is a nutritional
biomarker as in the case of plasma retinol, a depression in retinol
concentrations will result in an overestimate of vitamin A deficiency. In
contrast, where the biomarker is increased due to infection as in the case of
plasma ferritin concentrations, inflammation will result in underestimate of
iron deficiency. Infection and tissue damage can be recognized by their
clinical effects on the body but, unfortunately, subclinical infection or
inflammation can only be recognized by measuring inflammation biomarkers
in the blood. It is therefore important to measure biomarkers of inflammation
as well as of nutrition in prevalence surveys of nutritional status in apparently
healthy people.