Child obesity in Spain
WHO declares child obesity as an epidemic world. Making a total calculation of 340 million children and adolescents suffering from a disease or other.
The Spanish child population with an age between 5 and 10 years, constitutes a risk group since the data collected between 2015 and 2017 by COSI, reveal that Spain is one of the European countries in which the prevalence of obesity and overweightIt is very high. As for the prevalence of overweight and obesity in the male sex we are in the fourth country, surpassed by Greece, Malta and Italy ordered from highest to lowproblems. Spain is living an alarming and worrying situation in which the figures of obesity and overweight are very high among the younger population, if we do not put a solution to this problem, children who suffer from some of these diseases can have much more serious problems in thefuture.
Within this context, the Study steps is born in which different investigations will be carried out that will allow greater knowledge about excess weight among children, its causes and consequences, but it is also intended to carry out effective interventions.
The steps studio (Physical Activity, Sedentarism and Obesity), was created in 2019 by the Gasol Foundation and has the collaboration of the Hospital del Mar Institute of Research (IMIM). The main objective is to determine the prevalence of obesity, to know the proportion of sedentary children and young people, promote physical activity between children and youth population and know the lifestyles. You want to act on this population group since it is easier to teach at an early age healthy habits.
In order to reduce and avoid obesity, it is intended to raise awareness among families of this problem and promote, among children and youth, healthy eating, regular sports practice and carry out a correct rest. To carry out this study, the participation of 3.887 children and adolescents between 8 and 16 years. Data collection was carried out between the months of April, May and June 2019, in 247 schools in the 17 Autonomous Communities. To obtain the data, anthropometric measures were taken and made different questionnaires about lifestyles both to children and their parents, in addition to the questionnaire of these, one was included on the socioeconomic level and environmental variables, also teachersof Physical Education carried out the “ad hoc” questionnaire created by the Gasol Foundation and the Colef Council, to evaluate different environmental factors.
In addition to the questionnaires, 10% of the participating children during the 7 -day period used an accelerometer, to obtain a real analysis of the physical activity they performed up to date. The results obtained in the steps study, taking as reference the BMI of the participants, show us the prevalence of overweight and obesity between the child and youth population, with 20.7% and 14.2% percentages respectively.
We are in a critical situation, our country includes a very high prevalence of both diseases, being one of the European countries in which this disease predominates the most. These circumstances imply that we must all become aware of the seriousness of these problems and change our habits to be able to solve it. The intervention before these diseases implies including in our lifestyle a balanced and healthy diet, and the practice of physical activity, WHO recommends performing moderate or vigorous physical activity for 60 minutes a day, in the case of children’s population andJuvenile, 3 out of five children does not meet this recommendation. If the Spanish population is achieved by these habits, we would be advancing in the struggle to stop both obesity and overweight.
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