Obesity and overweight in pre-school: association with food consumption

Abstract

The research aimed to identify the prevalence of overweight and obesity and its relationship with food consumption in pre-school children from the private network. It was cross-sectional, descriptive, with a sample of 403 preschoolers. An anthropometric assessment was performed to obtain the BMI, data on the frequency of food consumption were collected. In the statistical analysis, Student's t test, the χ2 test (Chi-square) and Kruskal-Wallis were used, with a significance level of 5%. Pearson's correlation between food consumption and BMI for age was used. The results showed that 60.1% of the children were eutrophic and 1.2% were thin. The risk of overweight, overweight and obesity was found to be 20.8%, 5.2% and 12.7%, respectively. Thus, the consumption of certain foods showed a strong correlation with BMI for age regarding the risk of overweight, overweight and obesity.