Dietary pattern and incidence of children and youth obesity in a period of poverty reduction in Brazil

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the influence of economic factors on the children and adolescents of food intake, its relationship with the incidence of overweight and obesity and its evolution in the first decade of the 2000s. For this, we estimated models that seek to identify the relationship between the nutritional status of individuals and individual food consumption as well as the sensitivity of food consumption with respect to socioeconomic variables and their impact on the incidence of overweight. Even with the improvement in the income level of a significant part of the population, mostly from the 2000s, the evolution of the nutritional composition of household food availability shows the stabilization of a poor diet on health. Such behavior is favorable to the prevalence of overweight and obesity, especially in children and adolescents. This trend is observed in all income levels, and increasing with the level of family income. The concern with the nutritional status in childhood and adolescence stems from the risk of remaining overweight in adulthood, beyond the early incidence of DCNTs and psychosocial disorders. The identification of food intake during childhood and adolescence as well as its relationship with nutritional status, may contribute to determine how government interventions can reverse and prevent the youth obesity. Taking into account the recent improvement in the conditions of households, along with the high cost of a healthy diet, you need to check how changes in income and food prices may contribute to the nutritional status of children and adolescents. (AU)