ESPE Abstracts

Introduction: Obesity is the main public health problem in Mexico. Several factors have been described as explanations, mainly: increased sedentarism and caloric intake. Such environment has been described as “obesogenic”. The aim of this study was to describe the relationship between the components of such obesogenic environment and the adiposity of Mexican children and adolescents.

Methods: We carried a population-based cross-sectional study of Mexican children/adolescents (5-20 years old). We recruited subjects from public and private schools of Mexico City and performed full paediatric and nutritional assessment to them. We assessed diet habits by a 24-hour food intake survey on The Food Processor Nutrition Software, registered time dedicated to activities of interest (i.e. time dedicated to screen, sleep, exercise). We measured body composition by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry Lunar-iDXA. Adiposity measured as total body fat (kg), relative to weight body fat (%). We analysed the differences in adiposity (mean differences by total fat mass and fat mass percentage) between BMI-groups: underweight, normal weight, overweight and obesity. To assess the relationship between such obesogenic environment and the adiposity results, we performed a multiple lineal regression analysis considering daily screen-hours, hours of exercise and food intake adequacy as explicative variables and age, sex and pubertal status as cofounding variables.

Results: We assessed 1600 children/adolescents, whose BMI-group distribution corresponded to 14.4% of scholars and 18.4% of adolescents with overweight, and 17.7% of scholars and 12,3% of adolescents with obesity. The mean differences in total fat mass and fat mass percentage was statistical significance in all groups, with and increasing in the mean value of each group: underweight, normal weight, overweight and obesity, respectively. The three obesogenic environment components were significantly associated with increased adiposity: ≤60 minutes/day of physical activity, ≥2 hours/day of screen time and those who we classified as “short sleepers” (i.e. children with <9 hours/day and adolescents with <8 hours/day of sleep), with beta values of 5.5, 0.81 and 0.57 respectively.

Conclusions: The Mexican children/adolescents have a poor attachment to recommendations for healthy habits. Being the physical activity and an adequate dietary intake those that less attention receive. We have shown that habits such as exercise, screen time and lipid intake have a direct impact on the adiposity of Mexican children, so we must work on educating families.