Nutritional Status and Traditional Food Practices of Karbi People Attached to Behali Reserve Forest, Assam

Abstract

Nutritional study of any community gives us several knowledge of food habit, nature of food adoption and their impact on health. Agriculture based and forest depended nutrition always an unknown mystery to solve. The present study is based on such a situation of Karbi people of Bongaon village which is attached to Behali Reserve Forest, Assam. Several parameters like socio economic status, food habit, anthropometric measurementand health condition and forest dependent nutraceuticalswere used to assess the epidemiological study. Result has shown 80% of entire family still in the income range ≤ Rs. 5,000. There were 53% members of families crossed the HS level of education and 88% family livelihood was based on paddy agriculture. Rice is used as staple food by 100% families and many wild vegetables are used by them in their daily diet. Analysis of anthropometric parameters showed 70% and 53% normal BMI in adults of male and female respectively. The overall medical condition of both sexes showed that there was a  prevalence of diseases like diarrhea, jaundice, food borne allergies and headache/migraine in that area. Therefore, the overall study may be concluded with the comparison of all interdependent parameters of adults of Karbi families with a hope to further research in this area using different age groups with other parameters.