Eating habits, physical activity, nutrition knowledge, and self-efficacy by obesity status in upper-grade elementary school students

Childhood obesity has increased in recent decades in Korea. This study was designed to examine differences in the eating habits, physical activity (PA), nutrition knowledge, and self-efficacy of children by obesity status. Subjects were 5th-grade children from 70 elementary schools in 17 cities nationwide. Two-stage stratified cluster sampling was employed. Survey questionnaire included items related to general characteristics, eating habits, PA, nutrition knowledge and self-efficacy. Excluding incomplete responses, 3,531 data were analyzed using SPSS. Subjects were categorized into overweight·obesity (OW) and normal weight (NW) groups based on body mass index percentiles for age by sex. A total of 21.5% of subjects was overweight or obese. There were significant differences in gender, perceived stress, perception of body shape, body satisfaction, and interest in weight control between the OW and NW groups ( < 0.001). With respect to eating habits, the OW group ate breakfast ( < 0.05) and snacks ( < 0.01) less frequently, ate bigger meals ( < 0.001), and demonstrated less desirable behaviors during meals (