Obesity status of children from 4 to 7 years of age in the commune of Arica: A comparative study according to gender

Abstract

Obesity remains to be a global health problem. Chile has been affected by the high prevalence of obesity in the infant population. Obesity is shown interchangeably at early ages, being necessary to investigate this behavior in age groups of 4 to 7 years. To this end, a general objective has been set: to evaluate the nutritional status, from the anthropometric point of view, of children from 4 to 7 years of age in the district of Arica, carrying out a non-experimental, quantitative, cross-sectional, descriptive-comparative study. As a result, it was found that there weren’t statistically significant differences in the prevalence of obesity and overweight among girls and boys, although girls showed values of body mass index and percentage of fat mass discretely higher than boys and, the obesity increase was directly proportional to age.