Factores de riesgo asociados al sobrepeso y obesidad en niños y adolescentes durante la pandemia por COVID-19 en Chile

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused changes in people’s lifestyles, mainly in healthy eating habits and behaviors. Therefore, our objective was to evaluate the association of eating habits, family eating behaviors, lifestyles, and perception of nutritional status with the risk of overnutrition in children and adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic. A cross-sectional study was conducted on a sample of 661 Chilean children and adolescents. The study tool was an online self-report questionnaire taken during the COVID-19 lockdown. We observed overnutrition in 37.5%. Habits such as sleeping the recommended number of hours by age group and having healthy family behaviors decreased the risk of overnutrition by 49.0% (OR= 0.510, p= <0.001) and 10.8% (OR= 0.892, p= 0.01), respectively. Parents’ perception of weight gain during the pande-mic, the distortion of nutritional status and the health risk of their children’s nutritional status increased 4.8 (OR= 4.846, p= <0.001), 8.5 (OR= 8.580, p= <0.001) and 3.8 (OR= 3.826, p= <0.001) times, respectively, the risk of overnutrition in children and adolescents. In conclusion, the COVID-19 lockdown and school closures may have affected lifestyles. In addition, the role of parents in the perception of nutritional status and family eating behaviors is fundamental since they could be a predictor of the risk of overnutrition. These findings propose further research to design plans and programs to avoid the consequences related to overweight and obesity.