Studies to determine nutrition behaviour amongst middle school pupils living in the border areas of Poland and the Czech Republic.

BACKGROUND: In childhood and adolescence, adequate nutrition is vital for ensuring correct physical, mental and emotional development as well as effective learning ability. Thus, the acquiring of such healthy lifestyle behaviour is also important later in adult health. OBJECTIVES: To assess and compare the dietary habits of pupils attending middle school in Poland and the Czech Republic, who live in the border regions between these countries. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The study tool was a nutrition questionnaire dived into a section on socio-economic status and one on detailed dietary habits. Subjects were 202 pupils recruited from Poland and 202 from the Czech Republic. Statistical analyses were performed by the Statistica Ver. 9.0 software, where the Chi2 test was used to evaluate the significance of differences between the data, taking p