Chrononutrition Behaviour of Dhaka City School Children and Its Effect on Their Weight Gain: A Cross-sectional Analytical Study
Abu Torab MA Rahim, Shamima Akther, Sanjida Nur-A Afrin, Sazia Mahmood, Mahbuba Kawser
Keywords :
Body mass index Z-score, Chrononutrition, Obesity, Snacking, Urban school children
Citation Information :
Rahim AT, Akther S, Afrin SN, Mahmood S, Kawser M. Chrononutrition Behaviour of Dhaka City School Children and Its Effect on Their Weight Gain: A Cross-sectional Analytical Study. 2024; 1 (1):9-14.
Aim and background: Many recent studies identified increasing trends in the prevalence of overweight and obesity among children and adolescents in Bangladesh. Multiple factors were identified as attributes to this phenomenon. One of the underlying causes of the increasing prevalence of obesity and overweight among urban school children is assumed to be the high consumption frequency of energy-dense fast food available on the school premises. Studies addressing the role of fast foods (FF) intake behaviour of school-going children on their increasing weight gain are very scanty. The present study was undertaken to find out the causal association between the chrononutrition behaviour of fast food consumption and childhood overweight and obesity.
Materials and methods: A total of 246 students aged 11–18 years from 4 selected schools in Dhaka city were studied using a cross-sectional data collection technique. Along with socioeconomic and anthropometric variables, a pre-tested structured questionnaire was used to collect the consumption frequency of snacking and types of snack foods, as well as snacking time for frequent eaters per day. The association of chrononutrition behaviour (type, frequency, volume, and snacking time) of fast food consumption with overweight and obesity of children were explored by an appropriate statistical tools.
Results: Screening of the children resulted in 26.02% of them being overweight while 7.32% of them were obese on body mass index (BMI) Z-score. Most of them belonged to higher-income families. About 42% of them consumed commercial snack foods at least one time per day. The BMI Z-score of them significantly correlated with their frequently eaten snack foods (p = 0.048) and eating out behaviour (p = 0.016). Body mass index of the children was also influenced significantly by parents’ education (p = 0.002) and nutritional knowledge (p = 0.000). Two times snack eaters per day showed higher BMI-score than one-time eaters.
Conclusion: The findings denote an association between chrononutrition behaviour of snacking among Dhaka school children with their higher BMI Z-score.
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