Abstract

Adequate dietary intake and absorption is the key factor to maintain health and nutritional status of an individual. Students are the future of a generation and adequate nutrients consumption is very much important to maintain their wellbeing and nutrition. Thus, this study was conducted to identify the energy and nutrients intake among university students of Bangladesh. A randomized type of cross-sectional study was conducted with 300 randomly selected students of a public university situated in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The consumption of the animal and plant foods rich in macro and micro nutrients were obtained by using 24-hour recall method. Dietary history was recorded for one day using a semi-structured questionnaire. The 24-hour dietary recall information was used to calculate the nutrient intake of the respondents. This finding indicates that the contribution of energy from carbohydrate and protein is much higher than fat among both male and female students. The protein consumption was found higher than the RDA among the students. The average intake of calcium, iron, vitamin C, thiamin, riboflavin and niacin of both male and female students are lower than the RDA. This study findings raise concerns about the university students' dietary intake of the essential trace elements such as calcium, iron and vitamin c, which may result severe micronutrient deficiencies in their future life. Therefore, it can be recommended to disseminate nutritional knowledge to the students and conduct further research with similar population in broader spectrum to generalize the findings.