Prevalence and determinants of obesity among adolescent school children of North Kerala

Abstract

Background: Obesity has emerged as one of the major health problems in recent years. This increasing prevalence has implications in health issues in later parts of life. Life style factors and diet practices are the attributed factors to the development of obesity.Methods: This cross sectional study was conducted among 1011 adolescent school children in Kozhikode corporation area, Kerala, South India after getting necessary permissions. A semi structured questionnaire which contained questions related to socio demographic characters, diet, physical activity and other known risk factors of obesity in adolescents was administered.Results: 76.8% of the study subjects were of normal weight, while 15.5% were underweight (thinness- 9% and severe thinness- 6.5%). 1.9% were obese and 5.8% were overweight. The combined prevalence of overweight and obesity was 7.7%. Nuclear family, better family education, better SES, skipping breakfast and consumption of more sweets were associated with obesity.Conclusions: Preventive and promotive measures to reduce the burden of obesity needs to be initiated from early childhood and must be insisted to the family members also. School based lifestyles and behavioural change measures, encouraging school teachers to actively participate in these measures, active involvement of school children in regular sports activities, periodic anthropometric assessment and intervention when needed along with sensitization of parents towards the consequences of obesity are some of the measures to prevent the rising epidemic.

Prevalence and Factors Associated with Overweight/Obesity in Adolescent School Girls: A Cross-Sectional Study in Kolkata, India

“…The study suggested that obesity was higher among those who watched television and mobile and suffered from sleeplessness. Obesity was associated with television viewing in many studies, and the more the duration of television watching, the higher the prevalence of obesity (Viswambharan et al 2020). A review by Mech et al (2016) also found that television viewing mediated the relationship between socioeconomic status and overweight and obesity in children (Gatjens et al 2020).…”

“…Adolescent obesity is growing very fast and leads to a wide range of health issues regardless of weight during adulthood. It has become increasingly important to identify the risk factors predisposing to overweight and obesity from childhood onwards (Viswambharan et al 2020). Adolescence is a period of high physical growth and reproductive maturation that generally requires optimal macro or micronutrients or both (Egidaw and Gebremariam 2019;Kumar et al 2021).…”

Effect of structured physical education on attitude of elementary school students towards physical activity

“…In spite of a well-planned curriculum and provision in school timetable, Physical and Health Education has been mostly neglected in the schools in the state of Kerala. This has resulted in an unprecedented hike in the percentage of obese and overweight children and adolescents, with current estimates at approximately 10% in Kerala (Nair & Chellappan, 2021; Viswambharan, Bina & Raphael, 2020; Abraham & Pillai, 2019) [7,13,1] . Decreased physical activity has been identified as a main cause of obesity in children and adolescents (Sallis et al, 2012) [10] .…”