Abstract:

Childhood obesity is an issue increasingly recurrent in health means, since it is known that obese children have a much greater chance of becoming an obese adult, well, diseases related to being overweight tended to appear much earlier form, causing injury to the health of individuals. The study aims to assess the prevalence of overweight and obesity in school children of elementary school of public and private schools in the city of Boa Viagem-CE. This work consisted of an epidemiological study with a quantitative approach, cross-sectional, with children aged between 6-10 years, of both genders. The participants were 305 children (159 boys and 146 girls) who underwent anthropometric measurements of body mass and height, calculating the body mass index (BMI), which was analyzed by percentile and normative tables. The comparison between the sexes and type of school was made by the chi-square test. The results obtained through the BMI percentile shows that 69,8% of children are in eutrophic group, 9,8% are overweight, 7,2% were obese, 3,3% of children are malnourished and 9,8 % risk for malnutrition. In conclusion, 17% of the children studied are overweight, and it is necessary to implement nutritional and sports educational actions both by the school and the community in order to minimize health problems in adult life.

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