Ten thousand steps and more. How can an increase in physical activity at school reverse the obesity curves? Almost a European child aged 7 to 9 (31 % of boys and 28 % of girls) are overweight and, among them, 11.6 % suffer from obesity, according to A report of The World Health Organization (WHO), published in 2021 . It was one in four in 2010. This increase does not only concern Europe: obesity rates in children and adolescents around the world rose from less than 1 % in 1975 to almost 6 % among girls and 8 % in boys in 2016.
a study, published on the February 22 in the journal Obesity , conducted by research teams from the universities of Zagreb (Croatia) and Ljubljana (Slovenia), showed, in children aged 6 to 14 educated in Slovenian schools, that two to three physical and sports lessons (EPS) additional per week made it possible to prevent infant obesity.
From 2011 to 2018, 34,000 students from 216 Slovenian schools participated in this program called Healthy Lifestyle. They followed two additional weekly EPS sessions, which corresponds to approximately one more hour per day. Sessions that are added to the usual EPS lessons, and take place at the end of the hours of class. Different sports were offered, freedom given to each teacher to choose the content of the interventions.
Children were distributed according to their weight (normal, overweight, obese) and were compared to a control group which had “only” standard EPS lessons. Conclusion: Those who had followed the program saw their body mass index (the weight divided by the square of the size in meters) drop from the third year, to reach a peak of improvement of 1.4 kilo per meter Square for girls and 0.9 kilo per square meter for boys, the improvement being the strongest in children affected by obesity. “A healthy lifestyle is effective in reducing obesity, reaching its maximum efficiency after five years of participation,” observe the authors. 2> a pivotal period
“This is a very interesting study, which shows the importance of the duration of a program to promote physical activity to fight against overweight and obesity of the child, but also the importance of the school environment. This is an essential playground, “notes Jérémy Vanhelst, the research team in nutritional epidemiology (Inserm, INRAE, CNAM, Sorbonne Paris Nord University). However, “it is a pivotal period during which lifestyle is built, settle down to last until adulthood,” continues the researcher. He had already coordinated a study, published in The Journal of Pediatrics in 2015, showing that a moderate physical activity has a beneficial effect on attention in adolescents from 12 to 17 years old. The family environment is also very important in the practice of physical activity in children, he underlines today. In reverse the trends is essential, and it is the challenge of the program of the thirty minutes of physical activity at the school which was generalized, in France, in September 2022.
You have 23.2% of this article to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.