The analysis of the degree of 10–13-year-old children’s nutrition, dietary habits and physical activity in the selected rural and urban areas of Silesian Province (Poland)

Abstract

Background The nutrition disorders in the children’s population, in the form of malnutrition, as well as overweight and obesity constitute a significant clinical problem in the contemporary world. As a result of the improper way of children’s nutrition, their physical and mental development becomes dysfunctional, which leads in their adult life to serious health consequences, among others, complications of cardiovascular system, metabolic and endocrinological and disorders, improper development of osteoarticular system and mental diseases and social withdrawal. Results Five hundred eighty-nine parents of children aged 10–13 participated in the survey questionnaire, where 304 respondents were constituted by girls (51.61%); however, the remaining 285 people were represented by boys (48.39%). It turned out that overweight and obesity concern approximately 44% of respondents; however, approximately 22% of children have too low body weight in relation to age and sex. While analysing dietary habits, it was observed that main meals are not consumed by all children; breakfast is consumed by approximately 90% of respondents, packed lunch just by 70% and lunch and supper by 90% of respondents. In the course of subsequent analyses, it turned out that over ¾ of respondents declared that their child drinks mineral water every day, only approximately 44% of them drink milk every day; however, almost 18% of children reach for sweet drinks. Children eat sweet or salty snacks too often (over 55% every day or several times a week), resigning from consuming fruit and vegetables (just half of respondents every day), fish and brown bread (below 30% of children eat these products less than once a week); every fifth child dedicates less than 3 h to physical activity, 39% of respondents do exercise from 3 to 5 h a week, the next 25% from 5 to 10 h. Conclusions It was observed in the analysed population that over half of them struggle with the degree of nutrition disorders in the form of overweight and obesity or malnutrition. We may conclude, based on the obtained results, that children have inappropriate dietary habits, consuming too small quantities of fruit and vegetables, brown bread, fish and drinking improper quantities of water and milk. Repeatedly, they replace these full-value products by consuming sweets and salty snacks and by drinking sweet drinks, they also more and more often reach for processed food in fast food bars. What is worrying, it was also observed that in the analysed population, children dedicate too little of their free time to physical activity and additional physical activities.

The Impact of Physical Activity at School on Eating Behaviour and Leisure Time of Early Adolescents

“…The cited study pointed out a positive correlation between the healthy diet and PA level, which was also found in this study [ 42 ]. The results related to the frequency of vegetables and fruit eating obtained in this work conform to the results of Zadek et al (2019) or Jonczyk et al (2021) [ 79 , 80 ]. In the PRO GREENS study [ 81 ] involving 11-year-olds in 10 European countries, 23.5% of children met the recommendations for consumption of fruit and vegetables.…”

Movement Behaviour and Health Outcomes in Rural Children: A Systematic Review

“…Overall, the prevalence of overweight and obesity in children/adolescents ranged from 16% to 38% [6,31,[38][39][40][41]47,[49][50][51]55,59,60], but in one study this frequency was lower than 8% [35] while in another one the frequency was close to 50% [53]. Regarding sex-differences, different results were founded, with some studies highlighting a higher frequency of overweight/obesity among girls [6,40,50], one study showing a higher frequency among boys [38], and no differences were observed in three studies [44,49,53].…”

“…Regarding the year of publication, the oldest study included in this review dates from 1997 [42], and from this year until the end of the first decade of the 21st century, 20 (29.4%) studies were identified [25][26][27]37,[42][43][44][45][46]58,63,[69][70][71][72][79][80][81]84,85]. However, since then, an increase in the number of publications was observed, and between 2016-2021 we were able to identify 25 (36.7%) published studies that attained our eligibility criteria, i.e., in these last five years there was a higher number of publications than in the first 13 years considered in the reviewer timeframe [4,6,[32][33][34][35][36]40,41,[52][53][54][55][56][57]61,62,67,68,[76][77][78]87,89,90].…”

“…Regarding the place where studies were conducted, almost one-third of them [22 (32.3%)] sampled children from North America (USA [4,[42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51]53,55,57,[79][80][81][82][83] and Canada [52,54,56]). Europe was the second continent with the highest number of publications, with 15 (22.0%) studies (Portugal [40,[74][75][76], Spain, [39,71,77], Cyprus [69,70], Poland [38,41], United Kingdom [73,78], Greece [72], and Ireland [37]); followed by Asia [12 (17.6%) studies-China [35,63,68], India [65,67], Japan [33,36,64], Malaysia [31,34], Iran …”

“…Regarding the studies that used questionnaires (20), different instruments were used (such as Physical Activity Checklist, Physical Activity Questionnaire for Children, IPAQ-A, Self-Administrated Physical Activity Checklist, Youth Activity Profile, PAQ-C, System for Observing Fitness Instruction Time, Previous Day Physical Activity Recall) [26,30,[33][34][35][36]38,39,[41][42][43]46,47,[49][50][51][57][58][59][60], as well as different strategies to describe the studied variables-for example, specific regression equations, the use of METs (metabolic equivalent), means and medians of counts and predefined cut-off points. In addition, three studies used accelerometers and questionnaires together [54][55][56], providing additional information regarding the type of activities children were enrolled in, as well as food consumption and socioeconomic status.…”