Obesity in older people: A new scenario and a new challenger

Abstract

many environmental factors, including food availability, the ability to purchase and preparation of food and the numerous advertisements of products [6]. Then, the option of analyzing eating patterns can provide better benefits in proposing effective measures to promote health through food, which is the focus of nutritional epidemiology [7].Then, the aim of the study was to describe dietary patterns of the olders and associate with central and abdominal obesity as well as with the macronutrient intake. MethodologyThen, in the year of 2011, a cross-sectional study was carried out in Botucatu city, São Paulo, Brazil, in which anthropometric measures were obtained and a sociodemographic and a validated frequency food questionnaire (FFQ) were applied in a representative sample 355 older people. The sample size was calculating based on the number of items in the FFQ (71 food items). Following the recommendation of this sort of research, we considered five subjects for each item, totalizing the mentioned sample size. Results and discussionResults showed that 15.95% of men and 30.20% of female had general obesity and 42.94% of men and 74.47% of females had central obesity elderly. The highest prevalence regarding morbidities was hypertension (55.92%), triglycerides (38.49%) and diabetes mellitus (20.72%). Major of them are married (60.6%) and retired (75%). The