Health Education
Health Education in the PSEB Matric paper tests whether you can define health, apply nutrition and hygiene rules, and link nutrients to deficiency diseases. Questions are usually short-answer and case-based, so exact terms matter.
Core rules and concepts
- WHO definition: health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.
- A balanced diet supplies energy foods (carbohydrate, fat), body-building foods (protein), protective foods (vitamins, minerals), fibre and water in the right proportion.
- Match deficiency to nutrient: vitamin A - night blindness; vitamin B1 - beriberi; vitamin C - scurvy; vitamin D - rickets; iron - anaemia; iodine - goitre.
- Personal hygiene includes daily bathing, clean nails, brushing teeth twice a day, clean clothes and safe drinking water.
- Communicable disease control uses safe water and food, handwashing, ventilation, isolation, immunization and vector control.
Worked example
A 14-year-old eats only boiled rice and pickle for lunch. Is this balanced? Reasoning: rice is mainly carbohydrate and gives energy, but the meal has almost no first-class protein, vitamin A or C, iron or calcium; pickle adds salt, not protective nutrients. Over time this pattern can cause protein-energy malnutrition, anaemia and poor growth. A better plate adds dal, curd or egg for protein, and green leafy vegetables or fruit for vitamins and minerals, with water.
Traps that cost marks
- Writing health means only absence of disease misses the WHO definition.
- Confusing vitamin C with rickets; rickets is linked to vitamin D and calcium.
- Treating pickle or ketchup as a vegetable serving.
- Forgetting ORS in diarrhoea and calling every loose stool food poisoning.