Álvarez ORI, Cordero CGR, Vásquez CMA, Altamirano CLC, Gualpa LMC

Language: Spanish
References: 0
Page: 852-859
PDF size: 245.77 Kb.

ABSTRACT

Introduction: there is sufficient scientific evidence that nutrition influences health throughout life. An inadequate diet from gestation is associated with retardation of growth, psychomotor and intellectual development, and an excessive diet leads to overweight, obesity and chronic non-communicable diseases.
Objective: to determine the association of dietary habits and nutritional status based on anthropometric and dietary indicators of schoolchildren from the city of Azogues, Ecuador, 2016.
Method: a descriptive and cross-sectional study was conducted with simple random sampling in children of both genders. They were given a form for the collection of data along with anthropometric assessment and the Krece Plus rapid nutritional test to determine their eating habits.
Results: the prevalence of overweight was 20.3 %; obesity was 17.8 % with significant difference in relation to sex, p = 0.0241 and malnutrition due to deficit was 1.3 %. Food habits reflect a frequency of 66.3 % of the population with average quality of eating habits, 25.4 % with low quality and only 8.57 % with high quality of habits. (High ≥ 9, medium 6 to 8, and low ≤ 5 points). There was a significant association between nutritional status (dietary habits) and nutritional status with p = 0001.
Conclusions: overweight and obesity were closely related to eating habits and body mass index, so these factors must be taken into account in order to implement primary prevention policies that allow a decrease in the prevalence of these health problems.