Resumen

FLORES-HUERTA, Samuel; KLUNDER-KLUNDER, Miguel  y  MEDINA-BRAVO, Patricia. Elementary school facilities as an opportunity to prevent overweight and obesity in childhood. Bol. Med. Hosp. Infant. Mex. [online]. 2008, vol.65, n.6, pp.626-638. ISSN 1665-1146.

In the last years obesity has had in Mexican school children an annual increment of ~0.8 percent, which is the highest incidence among all age groups. Because this disease is an example of therapeutic failure and predisposes to suffer chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure, prevention, better than cure, is the important issue. In this review is stressed the importance that all children every morning before leaving to school have breakfast at home, in order to prevent learning problems and obesity. Furthermore, some recommendations are given to parents about healthy foods that must be included in breakfast as well as in lunch children take to school. We discuss the possibility to transform the scholar cooperative in a place where children could buy healthy foods instead of industrialized foods and beverages. The analysis of the scholar currícula indicates that the information that students receive is insufficient to acquire healthy life habits related with healthy diet and physical activity, although it may be improved. It is important to promote the practice of physical activity inside and outside of school because is beneficial for children health. Given that children physical growth is an outcome of feeding habits and physical activity, it is crucial to establish a periodical growth measurement informing the parents its meaning in terms of children health. From the experience of randomized controlled trials, it is known that lowering body mass index is difficult even though the intervention is long and multilateral. Mexico has a national system of textbooks for scholar children that could be used as a huge platform to deliver messages to acquire healthy life habits and reach nearly every home. To accomplish this purpose, it is necessary to enrich the currícula content, to prepare appropriate educational materials, to work in teacher training on nutritional topics, and, eventually, to evaluate the results.

Palabras llave : School; child; obesity; prevention; life style; school; elementary.

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