Objective: To describe the prevalence of overweight, obesity and being thin in adolescents of La Paz City, Bolivia. Design: Cross-sectional study, clustered sampling. Setting: La Paz, Bolivia, August-September 2003. Subjects: Height and weight of 525 adolescents (mean age 16 y; s.d.71.3) attending public and private schools were measured; sociodemographic characteristics were assessed with a short questionnaire.Results: The present study reveals that 9.3% (72.5) of the sample are thin adolescents; 19.8% (73.4) is the overall prevalence of overweight and 2.3% (71.3) the overall prevalence of obesity. The odds of being thin were higher among those working (P ¼ 0.03) and among those of higher age (Po0.001). The odds of being overweight were higher among female subjects (Po0.001). The odds of being obese were higher among younger adolescents (P ¼ 0.046) and among the more wealthy ones (P ¼ 0.044). Conclusions: A large prevalence of 22% overweight/obesity in adolescents from La Paz City was observed. The findings support the need of enhanced nutritional surveillance and interventions particularly in female adolescents.

The results presented in this paper are part of the early findings from a large European study, VeggiEAT involving the UK, Denmark, France and Italy with the aim of improving vegetable consumption in young people and older people. The results presented here are from UK young people (aged 12-14) focusing on familiarity and liking of vegetables and looking at their vegetable consumption and awareness of what constitutes a healthy diet. The study adds to the literature on vegetable familiarity, liking and consumption in this age group.Early exposure of young children to a variety of vegetables is very important and parents/carers and school nurses need to understand the importance of this in terms of the foods offered and available early within a child`s life and the potential influence of this on vegetable consumption over their lifetime.

In 2000, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) produced a revised growth reference. This has already been used in different settings outside the USA. Using data obtained during a nutritional survey in Madagascar, we compare results produced by using both the 2000 CDC and the 1978 National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS)/World Health Organization (WHO) growth references. We show that changing the reference has an important impact on nutritional diagnosis. In particular, the prevalence of wasting is greatly increased. This could generate substantial operational and clinical difficulties. We recommend continued use of the 1978 NCHS/WHO reference until release of the new WHO multi-country growth charts.

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