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Breakfast skipping by children, with its varying global prevalence and associated factors, is well documented to adversely affect their health, cognitive ability, academic performance and anthropometric status. Libya, a country with a young population base, has limited information on breakfast skipping prevalence among its young citizens as well as its compounding factors unique to the country. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the breakfast skipping pattern among Benghazi primary school children.

The paper's approach is to use a cross sectional study among 386 primary school children (196 males and 190 females) using an interviewer‐administered structured questionnaire. The enrolment exclusion criteria were a pre‐existing chronic disease or a food allergy or food intolerance or any acute illness.

Breakfast skipping during weekdays (38.6 per cent, n=149), reduced drastically on weekends (1.0 per cent, n=4); 10.7 per cent subjects skipped breakfast daily (mean 2.5 + 1.3 days). Absence of hunger and lack of time to eat or prepare breakfast were cited as main barriers in its regular consumption. Bread and milk were the most commonly consumed breakfast foods. Certain groups of regular breakfast eating subjects consumed higher (p < 0.05) dietary thiamine and iron than their breakfast skipping counterparts and also better fulfilled their daily requirements for these nutrients. Parental breakfast eating habits influenced their children's breakfast eating pattern.

Efforts, including better time management, are required to inculcate a positive breakfast eating attitude among Benghazi primary school children. Their parents need to act as better role models by adopting healthy breakfast eating practices themselves.

The paper shows that breakfast skipping among Benghazi primary school children is a nutritional problem of grave concern, warranting a public health intervention.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the extent of actual malnutrition and its risk among cancer patients receiving radiotherapy and/or chemotherapy in the Libyan city of Benghazi.

A cross‐sectional nutritional assessment study using the patient‐generated subjective global assessment (PG‐SGA) was carried out on 200 (91 males and 109 females) cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy.

A total of 25 per cent of the subjects were severely malnourished while 73.5 per cent were either at risk of malnutrition or suspected to be malnourished. Almost all (99.5 per cent) needed some degree of intervention (critical in nature for 83.5 per cent). Family income and physical activity were associated with nutritional status (p<0.05). Body Mass Index alone is an insensitive criterion for identifying malnutrition among such patients. All the sections and subsections of the PG‐SGA had a statistically significant positively correlation with its total score (r=0.51‐0.96, p<0.05). Dieticians played a very limited role in patient nutritional care.

It is suggested that dieticians should play a more participatory and prominent role in a multidisciplinary team involved in patient nutritional care. The PG‐SGA can help identify areas where tailor made strategies to counteract specific malnutrition or its risk can be planned, implemented and monitored.

There exists a considerable prevalence of malnutrition among Benghazi cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy, most of whom need critical intervention.

Nutrition education is an important measure to improve dietary habits and food choices, since poor dietary habits are the main reason for poor nutritional status of adolescents. In this context, the purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of nutrition education on the nutritional and dietary profile of adolescents and early adults.

A pre‐test post‐test experimental design was employed and the study was a cross‐sectional study. From three stratified areas of Benghazi city, two schools were selected by random sampling. From the total of six schools, all the children aged 14‐21 years were selected, amounting to 111 girls and 89 boys. Nutrition education was imparted after initial nutritional (BMI, physical activity) and dietary assessment (food frequency, 24 hour recall) and repeated at weekly intervals. After three months, nutritional and dietary assessments were again repeated.

No significant changes in BMI and physical activity were observed. A significant reduction in the frequency of intakes of chocolate (p < 0.01), chips (p < 0.01), bread and fast food in the female subjects and bread (p < 0.01), cereals and chocolate in the male subjects were observed. Significant increases were observed with respect to percentage of RDA met by intake of nutrients such as energy, carbohydrate, riboflavin and niacin and a significant decrease in the intake of zinc in male subjects.

The paper shows that nutrition education is the need of the hour, which would help adolescents and early adults to imbibe healthy eating habits.