BREAKFAST might be the most important meal of the day but 13-year-old Ahmad Bukhari Nawawi Ahmad Zailani would rather catch extra minutes of sleep than fuel up for the day.

The SM Sri Pantai student in Kuala Lumpur typifies the Malaysian teen in a Health Ministry survey, which uncovered poor eating habits among adolescents, with 31% of those interviewed saying they do not even have a main meal a day.

Bukhari admitted to watching television till late on school nights and waking up just in time in the morning to catch the 6.30am bus to school..

“I usually don’t have any breakfast. I’m afraid of being late. I don’t eat a full meal at lunch or mid-day, either.

“My mother doesn’t have time to cook as she works as a babysitter. If I’m hungry, I’ll just make some toast,” he said, at home at the Pantai Ria People’s Housing Project (PPR) flats in Pantai Dalam.

Bukhari is in the 24% of Malaysian teens in the 2017 Health and Morbidity Survey who said they ate just one main meal a day. 

Only 18% of those surveyed said they ate three proper meals in a day, and 27% said they had two main meals.

Researchers’ concerns over poor diet and inadequate nutrition among youths are nothing new, yet awareness remains low among children and their parents about healthy eating choices and the link between nutrition and physical and mental development.

A Unicef survey last year found malnutrition among children living in low-cost flats to be higher than the national average of 22%, while another study in 2016 found that a quarter of toddlers in Putrajaya are stunted due to poor nutrition.

The 2017 Health and Morbidity Survey found that seven in 10 teens skipped breakfast regularly. 

Of those who skipped breakfast, 32% said it was because they had no time to eat, 44% said they had no appetite, and 9% said there was no food. 

Dinner was the main meal for 56%, followed by lunch for 48%, and breakfast for 30%.

The Public Health Institute (IKU) surveyed 27,497 students aged 13 to 17, at 212 schools nationwide, from March to May last year. 

The published survey data did not delve into the income group levels of the teens’ households.

It did, however, look at the urban-rural divide among teens and found that dietary habits, when it came to fast food and sugary carbonated drinks, were only slightly worse in rural areas than in urban areas.

Overall, 11.1% of students surveyed ate fast food three times a week, of which 11.1% lived in rural areas and 10.6% were in cities.

Soft drinks were consumed by 41% of teens in rural areas on a regular basis, compared to 34% in urban areas, and were preferred by more boys (40%) than girls (32%).

Regular Intake of soft drinks was defined as two or three drinks in one day.

They were also a favourite among lower secondary school students at 40%, compared to those in the upper forms at 32%.

Overall, one in three, or 36% of schooling teenagers had carbonated drinks daily, with Sarawak the highest at 57.4%, Labuan (52.4%), and Sabah (46.9%).

The survey also noted that sugar intake in adolescents had increased 1.4 times form 2012 to 2017.

Megat Adam Mikhail Zulazhar, 15, said fizzy drinks were nice to have while walking home from school, adding that he had two or three sodas a day.

Breakfast is usually nasi lemak or chicken rice, but he said he had a morning meal only about three times a week.

“I don’t like vegetables. Fruits, I rarely eat at all, maybe three to four times a month,” said Megat who helps his father sell drinks at a stall.

On fruit and vegetable intake, the survey found an overall low rate of 23.5% of teens who ate them daily.

The lowest fruit and vegetable consumption rate was in Putrajaya at 12.6%, followed by Malacca (14.8%), and Penang (15.5%). – August 26, 2018.