Effect of Garden Cress Seeds Incorporated Health Mix among Selected Anaemic Adolescent Girls (12-15 Years) in Dindigul District, Tamil Nadu, India

Iron deficiency anaemia is one of the global health problems. Anaemia affects all age groups ie. , infants, children, adolescents, pregnant women, lactating women and aged people. Adolescent girls are highly vulnerable to anaemia. Hence, iron supplementation is highly essential to combat anaemia. So, the present study was done to assess the effect of garden cress seeds incorporated health mix among anaemic adolescent girls of the age group 12-15 years. Fifty grams of the health mix contained garden cress seeds (5g), rice flakes (20g), bajra (5g), roasted Bengal gram dhal (5g), samai (5g) and 10g of jaggery. The supplement contained 10 mg of iron. The mix (50g) was supplemented daily for a period of six months for 100 anaemic adolescent girls. Haematological parameters like haemoglobin, red blood cell count, packed cell volume, mean corpuscular volume, mean cell haemoglobin, mean corpuscular haemoglobin concentration, serum iron, total iron binding capacity, serum transferrin, transferrin saturation and serum ferritin level were assessed before and after the supplementation to assess the effect of the health mix. After supplementation, the mean haemoglobin level raised from 8.230.49 to 11.110.4614 and there was a significant improvement in all the parameters. It was concluded that supplementation of the garden cress seeds incorporated health mix had a good effect.