Academic exercise (BSc.) Faculty of Food Science and Nutrition, Universiti Malaysia Sabah 2022.

Faculty of Food Science and Nutrition, Universiti Malaysia Sabah

Adequate dietary iron is important for childhood growth. It is prerequisite for cognitive development in children as iron is an essential element in production of haemoglobin in blood and myoglobin in muscle cells for the transfer of oxygen. This study was done to investigate the daily dietary iron intake and to determine the association of the sociodemographic factors and their cognitive performance with the iron take of children in Kampung Lingkudau, Ranau aged 8 to 12 years. Convenience sampling was used for the selection of respondents. A total of 18 respondents participated in this study. The respondents (8 males, 44.4% and 10 females, 55.6%) had mean age of 9.65 ± 1.30 years. Dietary intake was assessed using two day 24-hour recall and Food Frequency Questionnaire. Capillary blood haemoglobin was assessed using a single finger prick sample. Reported energy intake was compared to EI:BMR to determine biased reporters. Mean iron consumption of the 18 participants from Kampung Lingkudau, Ranau was 14.81 ± 11.68 mg/day when the 24-hour recall method was used but it was 16.74 ± 11.12 mg/day from the Food Frequency Questionnaire. The study showed a correlation between children's iron intake with their cognitive performance (rs = 0.828, p = 0.042) but did not have an association with the socioeconomic factors such as income [X2(4, N = 18) = 6.980, p = 0.137] and parents' level of education [X2(2, N = 18) = 12.107, p = 0.437] respectively.