Objective: To assess the nutritional status, food consumption and physical activity (PA) habits of Chilean school children, as a baseline for developing an educational intervention. Design: Cross-sectional study. Subjects: A total of 1701 children from 3rd to 7th grade in nine schools located in three geographical regions. Methods: We determined body mass index, food consumption (quantified FFQ which we categorised into five groups), PA in terms of TV viewing and frequency of after school PA. The data were analysed according to age, nutritional status and gender. A logistic regression analysis was performed using obesity as outcome. Results: Obesity was higher among boys; younger children presented higher prevalence in both genders. Daily intake of dairy products varied between 240 and 308 g, fruits/vegetables, between 197 and 271 g, energy-dense foods between 343 and 460 g. In all, 22.3 and 47% of the children watched over 3 h of TV during the week and weekend, respectively. Older children watched significantly more TV during the week, while on weekends all children increased this time significantly. Boys were more active than girls after school. The logistic regression analysis showed a significant association between obesity and low intake of dairy products. Conclusions: Prevalence of obesity among Chilean children is high. Although TV time, intake of energy dense foods and fruits/ vegetables appeared as risk factors for obesity, only dairy consumption was significantly associated with obesity. Sponsorship: FAO

Background Front-of package (FoP) nutrition labels are an option to guide consumer’s decision at the point of food purchase. Chile was the first country worldwide to implement a FoP warning label and thereafter several countries have followed this model. The objective of this study is to describe the process of development of the Chilean FoP warning label. Methods A stepwise study was conducted including literature review, qualitative phase (lay audience & expert group meetings) and quantitative phase in women/adolescents from low-middle-socioeconomic status neighborhoods, Santiago, Chile (2 sub-studies, using point-of-sale questionnaires). Outcomes were prototype visualization, ease of understanding, and ability to modify purchase behavior. Results The literature review and qualitative phase provided information on general text (e.g. short wording) and design characteristics (e.g. use of a logo, use of red or black colors); based on these characteristics 15 prototypes were created and quantitatively tested. In the first survey, a black-&-white stop sign and a black-&-white hand were preselected; in the second survey, the stop sign stating ‘Excess of < nutrient >’ had significantly better performance than the hand in terms of visualization, intention to purchase, and ability to modify intended purchase. Due to legal reasons the “excess of” was replaced by “high-in” in the final implementation of the law. Conclusions A simple black-&-white stop sign warning label was the best option to flag pre-packaged foods with an excess of energy or nutrients of concern for non-communicable diseases; this FoP warning label was implemented in Chile in June 2016 as part of the Chilean Food Labeling and Marketing Law. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s12889-019-7118-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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BackgroundChile has suffered a fast increase in childhood obesity in the last 10 years. As a result, several school programmes have been implemented, however the effectiveness of these needs to be evaluated to identify and prioritize strategies to curve this trend.MethodsCluster randomized controlled trial. Twelve primary public schools chosen at random over three regions of the country will take part in this study. The sample size consisted of a total of 1,655 children. For each region one school will be selected for each of the three nutritional intervention modes and one school will be selected as the control group. The intervention modes consist of the following:Healthy Kiosk and nutritional education (KSEAN);Optimized physical activity (AFSO);Healthy Kiosk and nutritional education (KSEAN) + optimized physical activity (AFSO);Control group. The effectiveness of each intervention will be evaluated by determining the nutritional condition of each child by measuring percentage of body fat, BMI and the z-score of the BMI. This study will also identify the eating behaviours, nutritional knowledge and fitness of each child, along with the effective time of moderate activity during physical education classes.DiscussionA protocol to evaluate the effectiveness of a school based intervention to control and/or reduce the rates of childhood obesity for children between 6 and 10 years of age was developed. The protocol was developed in line with the Declaration of Helsinski, the Nüremberg Code and the University of Chile Guidelines for ethical committees, and was approved by the INTA, Universidad de Chile ethical committee on Wednesday 12 March 2014.There is consensus among researchers and health and education personnel that schools are a favourable environment for actions to prevent and/or control childhood obesity. However a lack of evidence on the effectiveness of interventions to date has led some to question the wisdom of allocating resources to programmes. This is the first study of this kind in Chile and could be an important first step to provide guidance to political authorities in relation to which food and nutrition strategies to prioritize to curve this alarming trend.Trial registration ISRCTN32136790, registered retrospectively on 05 September 2014.