Calidad de la dieta en relación a sobrepeso y obesidad en escolares de una Unidad Educativa del cantón Ambato

Abstract

Currently, overweight and obesity have become a public health crisis. In Latin America and the Caribbean, it is estimated that 3 out of 10 children and adolescents between the ages of 5 and 19 are overweight, which is influenced by an incorrect diet. For this reason, the present work had the objective of establishing the relationship between the quality of the diet and the presence of overweight and obesity in schoolchildren of 5th, 6th and 7th year of the Tirso de Molina Educational Unit of the Ambato Canton. For which a qualitative and quantitative approach methodology was used, of a descriptive and cross-sectional type, which included a study sample of 219 students to whom the food consumption frequency questionnaire was applied, in addition to being We took their anthropometric measurements. As a result, it was obtained that the boys presented a body mass index of 22.4 ± 2.74 and the girls 22.4 ± 2.74, at the same time it was determined that 52.7% of the students had a poor diet, that there was no significant difference in diet quality between boys and girls (p>0.05) and that there is a negative correlation between body mass index and diet quality (p<0.01: Rho= -0.345). It is concluded that the quality of the diet is related to the body mass index, since the worse the quality of the diet, the greater the weight of the students and vice versa.