The predictors of obesity among urban girls and boys aged 8–10 years : a cross-sectional study in North-Western Poland

Background: Children worldwide are increasingly becoming overweight and obese and developing related health problems, including hypertension, lipid disorders, abnormal glucose tolerance, type 2 diabetes, and secondary psychological disorders. The aim of the study was to determine sociodemographic risk factors that predict an increase in BMI in children at an early school age.

Material and method: The study covered 4972 children aged 8–10 years, including boys (N = 2461) and girls (N = 2511). Measurements of basic anthropometric indicators were used, such as body height, body weight, body composition, and physical fitness. The criteria developed by the International Obesity Task Force (IOTF) were adopted. Sociodemographic features were analyzed based on a diagnostic survey. IBM SPSS Statistics v.25 (Mineral Midrange SA, Warsaw, Poland) and IBM SPSS Amos software (Mineral Midrange SA, Warsaw, Poland) were used to perform descriptive statistics, the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, Pearson′s chi-square test, Student’s t-test, and the Mann-Whitney U test. The statistical significance index was assumed to be p < 0.05, while p < 0.01 was taken as an indicator of a trend which was not completely statistically significant.

Results: Both the children and their parents had mainly moderate BMI. A total of 78.7% of children were within the weight norm. Among girls, extreme obesity was two times more frequent than extreme underweight. The examined boys were significantly taller, heavier, and had a higher BMI than girls. There were significant differences between boys and girls in BMI; however, gender alone accounted for less than 1% variance. The influence of parents′ characteristics was much greater, increasing the explained variance to 10%. Body weight of mothers and fathers (p < 0.001), mother′s height (p < 0.01) and both parents′ level of education (p < 0.001) were detected as significant predictors of children’s BMI.

Conclusions: The analysis of selected sociodemographic and health factors determining the BMI of the child population indicates the need for preventive action and health promotion both among children and their parents.