Management of Micronutrient Deficiencies in Adolescent Girls: An Interventional Approach

Throughout the history of human civilization, plants and their by-products have been major sources of medicine. Medicinal knowledge of numerous plant species has made an outstanding contribution in the origin an evaluation of many traditional herbal system of medicine. Iron requirement peaks during adolescence due to rapid growth with sharp increase in lean body mass, body volume and red cell mass which increase iron needs for myoglobin in muscles and hemoglobin in blood. Micronutrient malnutrition especially of iron, calcium, and vitamin C is recognized as an important public health problem affecting more than 2 billion people. Knol-khol also known as Kohlrabi (German turnip or turnip cabbage), Brassica oleracea is an annual vegetable, and is a low, stout cultivar of cabbage. Kohlrabi can be eaten raw as well as cooked. Edible preparations are made with leaves. Knol-khol leaves are rich in calcium, Iron and Vitamin C. leaves based products provide the nutritional and healthy products for maintaining the health status and well-being. The replication five time for all treatments and data obtained from investigation was statically analyzed by using analysis of variance (ANOVA) and critical difference (CD) techniques. Sensory evaluation was carried out by using nine point hedonic scale. In prepared product, Treatment T3 (15gm leaves, 28.33gm gram flour, 28.33gm flaxseed, 28.34gm pearl millet, 50gm jiggery and 50gm ghee) scored the highest in all aspects in hedonic scale. Nutritional composition of Calcium, Iron and Vitamin C were increased significantly with increased in percentage of prepared product.