Trends of underweight,overweight,and obesity in Brazilian children and adolescents

Objective to describe and analyze the trends of occurrence of underweight,overweight,and obesity in schoolchildren. methods this was a longitudinal study of trends conducted in a voluntary sample of brazilian children and adolescents. the sample was grouped by year of collection (period i: 2005 and 2006; period ii: 2007 and 2008,and period iii: 2009-2011),age category (children: 7 to 10 years,and adolescents: 11 to 14 years),and stratified by gender. the body mass index was used to classify the nutritional profile. trend analysis was verified using multinomial logistic regression (p < 0.05). results mean occurrences were 2.11% for underweight,22.27% for overweight,and 6.8% for obesity. there was a decrease of underweight in male adolescents from period i to ii,as well as an increase in female children from period ii to iii. regarding overweight,there was an increase followed by a decrease in male children. regarding obesity,there was an increase from period i to ii in all age groups and for both genders. conclusion the prevalence of underweight was less than 5% in all categories of age and gender. however,the categories of overweight and obesity showed higher values,and together comprised almost 30% of the young brazilian population; moreover,a trend toward increase in prevalence of obesity was observed up to the year 2008,followed by the maintenance of these high prevalence rates. © 2013 sociedade brasileira de pediatria.