EFEKTIVITAS KONSUMSI BUAH PEPAYA TERHADAP PENINGKATAN NAFSU MAKAN BALITA

Abstract

The incidence of malnutrition and undernutrition in toddlers in 2018 was 17.7%. Nutritional problems in toddlers cannot be separated from the problem of eating difficulties that often occur in toddlers. Research in Indonesia which was conducted in Jakarta on preschool children, showed that the prevalence of eating difficulties was 33.6%. The Karawang District Health Office stated that 270 toddlers experienced malnutrition in 2016. Several theories and studies state that the consumption of papaya affects on increasing appetite. The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of giving papaya fruit to increase the appetite of toddlers at the Adiarsa Community Health Center, Karawang Regency. The method of this research was a Quasy-experiment by giving papaya fruit and appetite massage to the treatment group, giving appetite massage only to the control group, and then observing the two groups. The sampling technique used purposive sampling, resulting in a total of 116 samples consisting of 58 cases and 58 controls. Statistical tests using the T-Independent Test. The results showed that there was no difference in the average appetite of toddlers who consumed papaya and toddlers who did not eat papaya (p=0.744). Suggestions for other researchers so that the confounding factors can be homogenized so that they do not affect research results such as the factor of giving variations in food menus to toddlers etc. The research time can be carried out for more than 1 month with monitoring and evaluation as long as the research can be carried out offline.