PREVALÊNCIA DE SOBREPESO E OBESIDADE EM CRIANÇAS DE 3ª E 4ª SÉRIE DO ENSINO FUNDAMENTAL

Currently, obesity has been the biggest health problem in the world, even more serious than undernutrition. Word Health Organization (WHO) claims that sedentary life style is the great enemy of health population. The main of this paper was to compare children from public and private schools, identifying factors that influence obesity and physical activity level. Physical activity has measured by a questionnaire; body mass, height, skin folds and body mass index (BMI) have also measured in 342 children, 9 to 10 years old from both sexes. Tests were based on the Brazilian Sport Project (PROESP-BR, 2004) from Federal Government. Boys from private schools were taller than which one from public schools. The older boys from private school have higher body weight and they had the BMI above normal. There were no significant differences in skin folders. We concluded that children form both schools that have significant overweight were: youngest public girls, youngest private girls and oldest private girls. Just the older private boys have been considered obese.