Journal of Obesity & Eating Disorders

Obesity and food habits of primary school going children: A longitudinal study

Global Summit on Obesity and Hormones
May 03-04, 2022 | Webinar

Mohammad Ohid Ullah

Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Bangladesh

ScientificTracks Abstracts: J Obes Eat Disord

Abstract

Childhood obesity has become a serious public health problem because of its strong association with adulthood obesity and the related adverse health consequences. The aim of this study was to reveal the changes of food habits and the effect of gender and time on body mass index (BMI) of primary school going children in this city based on a longitudinal study. Initially it was built a cohort of 94 primary school going children in Sylhet. The data were collected from the same children at the initial time (T0), after six months (T6) and after twelve months (T12). Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Multi-factor Analysis (MFA) and Linear Mixed model (LMM) have been applied to analyze the data. It is found that the rate of overweight has decreased among the male children and the rate of obese has increased among the female children over time. This indicates that female children have a tendency to keep themselves at home and to like indoor game most which may cause the risk of obesity. Food habits revealed that over time obese and overweight children consumed more carbohydrates, protein and junk foods than others. The results of LMM exposed that BMI of male students’ are comparatively less than female students’ over the study period of time. Taken together, it may conclude that overweight and obese children are increasing and male children are becoming less obese than female over time. We should make awareness to the students about the obesity problem to improve public health sector.

Biography

Dr. Mohammad Ohid Ullah has completed his MSc in Applied Statistics and Biostaistics from Hasselt university, Belgium and PhD from Wageningen University, the Netherlands. Now he is a professor at the department of Statistics, Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Sylhet, Bangladesh (https://www.sust.edu/d/ sta/faculty-profile-detail/17). He has published more than 30 papers in reputed journals and has been serving as an editorial board member of a reputed journal.