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Prevention and approaches to obesity in childhood
LUDVÍKOVÁ, Nikola
The main goal of the bachelor thesis called Prevention of and Approaches to Obesity in Childhood is to calculate and compare calories in food consumed by two different groups of children for a period of 14 days. The first group comprises children with the BMI value greater than 90th centile (obese or overweight children) and the condition for the other group is the BMI value lower than 75th centile (normal weight children). Another goal of the thesis is to compare the overall eating habits and physical activities of the individuals and to create recommendations for the obese individuals if a change is needed. The theoretical part of the thesis is focused on occurrence of obesity both in the Czech Republic and worldwide, classification and diagnosis, types, risk factors, therapy and prevention of obesity. A well-balanced diet for children and rules for proper eating habits are dealt with in this part of the thesis, too. Great influence of the life-style of the whole family on occurrence of obesity and overweight in children is highlighted here. The qualitative research method conducted by means of recording every meal by 24 selected children from the South Bohemian Region for a period of 14 days was used to prepare the research part. The data were collected in the period from January to April 2013; 12 obese patients of the paediatric consulting room in Třeboň and 12 respondents selected according to the corresponding age and sex were involved in the research. The information was collected from the children themselves, possibly from their parents. The calculations of the calories in the individual meals were processed by the ?Nutriservis Profesional? programme. Recording sheets to record meals and drinks during the period of measurement were used to evaluate calorie intake. The filled-in meal recording sheets were collected two weeks after these had been distributed to the research participants. The data were processed with the ?Microsoft Excel? computer programme using computing relations and its functions. Afterwards, the respondents? responses were processed and evaluated with the ?Nutriservis Profesional? programme. The processed data have been interpreted in form of a simple text and descriptive statistics. The results suggest two main differences in the eating habits of the two examined groups. One of them is regular eating and the other one is meal composition; there is a big difference in physical activities, too. As for the obese children, they often have irregular and unbalanced eating habits, do no physical activities and eat mainly fat and fried meals. Only several children differ from these criteria. The eating habits of normal weight children are various. The only common characteristic is regular physical activity. Some of the normal weight children eat in a similar way like the obese children, however, despite this the number of children having eating habits suitable to their age, height, sex and nearly following the rules for well-balanced diet prevails. The results show that obesity occurrence is significantly affected by the family anamnesis, i.e. genetics. The genetic predisposition to obesity plays a 40-percent role, however, this can be positively influenced by suitable eating habits and physical activities. The thesis conclusions suggest it is necessary to continually develop knowledge of proper eating habits and healthy life-style in all families, to try develop forms of obesity prevention in all segments of the society and not to believe in all misleading advertisements. ?
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