NUTRITIONAL STATUS EVALUATION BY ANTHROPOMETRIC ASSESSMENT OF A GROUP OF WORKERS IN SÃO PAULO CITY, BRASIL

Background and objectives: Since the 1970s, Brazil has undergone a reduction of malnutrition associated with an increase in obesity, a process called nutritional transition. The aim of the study was to evaluate the nutritional status of adult workers (19-59 years) of a shopping mall in the city of Sao Paulo, comparing the anthropometric evaluation data between those with sedentary (S) and non-sedentary (NS) work. Methods: This was a descriptive cross-sectional study with primary data collection of 107 volunteers (64 females; 43 males), who met the inclusion criteria and had signed the informed consent. Data included: Weight; height; arm, waist (WC), wrist and hip circumferences; triceps (TSF), bicipital, subscapular and suprailiac skinfolds, arm muscle circumference (AMC), sum of 4 skinfolds (S4SF) and the indexes BMI, central obesity (CO), waist to hip (WHR) and conicity index (CI). The S4SF was used to estimate the percentage of body fat and the results were compared to the BMI. Nutritional status and cardiovascular risk (CVR) was determined. Results: BMI and WC showed a positive correlation with age in both sexes; 62,8% of men of all ages were overweight (46,5%) or obese versus only 34,4% women (29,7% overweight) irrespective of age differences between sex groups. AMC, TSF and S4SF does not correlate with BMI for neither sexes. For women, WC and WHR identified 18% and 3% of CVR respectively. The CI showed positive correlation with age in both sexes and a good correlation and precocity in the identification of CVR, especially for men. Of women at NS (n=38) and S (n=26) type of work, 68,4% and 57,7% presented with normal BMI respectively, even though in both groups a higher than average fat percentage (HPFM) was observed (NS=81,6%; S=92,3%). Similar results were observed for men (NS=9; S=34), with 66,6% of NS and 94,1% of S presenting HPFM. Conclusions: BMI is an easy method to evaluate nutritional status of populations, but should be associated to other variables chosen in accordance to the ethnic group studied. The type of work might play an important role in the nutritional status and percentage of fat mass, but the present work fail to show it.