Abstract:One hundred fifty girls in the age group of 13-19 years were selected randomly from government schools of rural and urban area of district kurukshetra, Haryana and surveyed for their attitude towards food, knowledge and awareness about nutrition, behaviour and practices adopted to maintain nutritional status. Nutrition education was imparted to the subjects after assessing their basic nutrition knowledge. Nutrition education improved their awareness about nutrition and health significantly.

Adolescent constitute about 20% of the total population, during this period they experiment for their adult identity and transition from dependence to independence. This leads to development of feeling of awkwardness and development of malnutrition among them. The malnutrition during this period affects their later life i.e., adulthood and old age. Keeping this in view, present study has been conducted on them with the objective to assess their level of nutritional awareness as well as eating habits and nutritional status. For the purpose of study, total 970 adolescent girls, 500 from urban and 470 from rural area were randomly selected from different Government schools situated in urban and rural areas of district Kurukshetra. Questionnaire cum interview schedule techniques were adopted for collecting the data related to family background and dietary pattern as well as of nutritional knowledge. Out of 970 female adolescent subjects, majority (65.46%) of them were living in nuclear families followed by joint (34.53%). The maximum subjects belonging to nuclear families were from urban area (71.2%) as compared to rural area (59.36%) but maximum number of joint families belonged to rural (40.63%). About 89 % of adolescent girls were belonging to Hindu community. Sikh and Muslim girls constituted only 0.1% and 0.01% respectively. Regarding ordinal position maximum subjects of both urban and rural area had ordinal position first. The educational status of both mothers and fathers of the subjects were very low. Educated fathers of the respondents who were graduated were only 6.8% and mothers 1.2%. fathers of most of the subjects were involved in agricultural activities(58.64%) and doing government jobs were only 0.84%. mother of most of the respondents were housewife 85.89%. maximum subjects of both rural and urban area were vegetarians and trend of taking lunch was very poor. Only 8.45% girls used to take the packed lunch. Pocket money used for eatable purposes at school was between the ranges of one to five rupees 68.15%. 55% girls purchased eatables sometimes and 24.2% never purchased any eatables. The money used to purchase and consume the eatables in the school was samosa and patties. Adolescent subjects belonging to urban area had better knowledge than subjects belonging to rural area. Regarding height and weight and body mass index, measurement of height and weight and calculation of BMI showed that about 81% were underweight and 1.8% was approaching towards obesity.