This article presents the dietary habits of Lithuanian first-grade (7-8-year-old) students over a 15-year surveillance period to understand the trends and changes in their nutrition patterns. The presented data were collected from three study rounds of the Lithuanian Growth Surveillance Study conducted between 2008 and 2023, with a total sample of 11,594 first-grade students from all 10 counties of Lithuania. The main findings reveal significant shifts in breakfast consumption, with an increase in daily breakfast intake observed over the surveillance period.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: The monitoring of children's growth plays a crucial role in assessing their growth patterns and indicating their weight status. Overweight and obesity, determined by cut-offs of body mass index (BMI), are most commonly associated with unhealthy nutrition, non-communicable diseases, and other health disorders. The World Health Organization (WHO) initiated the WHO European Childhood Obesity Surveillance Initiative (COSI) to measure routinely trends in children's anthropometric changes, which allow intercountry comparisons within the European Region.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Parents can act as important agents of change and support for healthy childhood growth and development. Studies have found that parents may not be able to accurately perceive their child's weight status. The purpose of this study was to measure parental perceptions of their child's weight status and to identify predictors of potential parental misperceptions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEstablishment of the WHO European Childhood Obesity Surveillance Initiative (COSI) has resulted in a surveillance system which provides regular, reliable, timely, and accurate data on children's weight status-through standardized measurement of bodyweight and height-in the WHO European Region. Additional data on dietary intake, physical activity, sedentary behavior, family background, and school environments are collected in several countries. In total, 45 countries in the European Region have participated in COSI.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFChildhood obesity is a serious global health problem. Waist circumference (WC) and waist-to-height ratio (WHtR) reflect body fat distribution in children. The objectives of this study were to assess WC and WHtR in 7-year-old children and to determine body mass index (BMI), WC, and WHtR differences in children from 10 selected countries across Europe (Bulgaria, Czechia, Greece, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, North Macedonia, Norway, Spain, and Sweden) participating in the World Health Organization (WHO) Europe Childhood Obesity Surveillance Initiative (COSI).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Childhood Obesity Surveillance Initiative (COSI) routinely measures height and weight of primary school children aged 6-9 years and calculates overweight and obesity prevalence within the World Health Organization (WHO) European Region using a standard methodology. This study examines the trends in the prevalence of overweight and obesity from the first round of COSI carried out in 2007/2008 to the latest of 2015/2017 in 11 European countries in which data were collected for at least three rounds. In total 303,155 children were measured.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn 2015-2017, the fourth round of the World Health Organization (WHO) European Childhood Obesity Surveillance Initiative (COSI) was conducted in 36 countries. National representative samples of children aged 6-9 (203,323) were measured by trained staff, with similar equipment and using a standardized protocol. This paper assesses the children's body weight status and compares the burden of childhood overweight, obesity, and thinness in Northern, Eastern, and Southern Europe and Central Asia.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPhysical activity, sedentary behavior, and sleep are important predictors of children's health. This paper aimed to investigate socioeconomic disparities in physical activity, sedentary behavior, and sleep across the WHO European region. This cross-sectional study used data on 124,700 children aged 6 to 9 years from 24 countries participating in the WHO European Childhood Obesity Surveillance Initiative between 2015 and 2017.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn order to address the paucity of evidence on the association between childhood eating habits and urbanization, this cross-sectional study describes urban-rural differences in frequency of fruit, vegetable, and soft drink consumption in 123,100 children aged 6-9 years from 19 countries participating in the fourth round (2015-2017) of the WHO European Childhood Obesity Surveillance Initiative (COSI). Children's parents/caregivers completed food-frequency questionnaires. A multivariate multilevel logistic regression analysis was performed and revealed wide variability among countries and within macroregions for all indicators.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Socioeconomic differences in children's food habits are a key public health concern. In order to inform policy makers, cross-country surveillance studies of dietary patterns across socioeconomic groups are required. The purpose of this study was to examine associations between socioeconomic status (SES) and children's food habits.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFChildhood overweight and obesity have significant short- and long-term negative impacts on children's health and well-being. These challenges are unequally distributed according to socioeconomic status (SES); however, previous studies have often lacked standardized and objectively measured data across national contexts to assess these differences. This study provides a cross-sectional picture of the association between SES and childhood overweight and obesity, based on data from 123,487 children aged 6-9 years in 24 countries in the World Health Organization (WHO) European region.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Children are becoming less physically active as opportunities for safe active play, recreational activities, and active transport decrease. At the same time, sedentary screen-based activities both during school and leisure time are increasing.
Objectives: This study aimed to evaluate physical activity (PA), screen time, and sleep duration of girls and boys aged 6-9 years in Europe using data from the WHO European Childhood Obesity Surveillance Initiative (COSI).
Consuming a healthy diet in childhood helps to protect against malnutrition and noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). This cross-sectional study described the diets of 132,489 children aged six to nine years from 23 countries participating in round four (2015-2017) of the WHO European Childhood Obesity Surveillance Initiative (COSI). Children's parents or caregivers were asked to complete a questionnaire that contained indicators of energy-balance-related behaviors (including diet).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: This study aimed to investigate the oral health behaviours of mothers with young children and their attitudes towards dental caries.
Methods: The survey targeted all mothers with children under 3 years attending a primary healthcare centre (Department of Family Medicine at the Lithuanian University of Health Sciences [LSMU] Hospital) in Kaunas, Lithuania. The Bioethics Centre of the LSMU approved the study (No.
Background: The World Health Organization (WHO) European Childhood Obesity Surveillance Initiative (COSI) was established more than 10 years ago to estimate prevalence and monitor changes in overweight and obesity in children aged 6-9 years. Since then, there have been five rounds of data collection in more than 40 countries involving more than half a million children. To date, no comparative studies with data on severe childhood obesity from European countries have been published.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: In Europe, although the prevalence of childhood obesity seems to be plateauing in some countries, progress on tackling this important public health issue remains slow and inconsistent. Breastfeeding has been described as a protective factor, and the more exclusively and the longer children are breastfed, the greater their protection from obesity. Birth weight has been shown to have a positive association with later risk for obesity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNutrients
February 2019
It is unclear how dietary, physical activity and sedentary behaviors co-occur in school-aged children. We investigated the clustering of energy balance-related behaviors and whether the identified clusters were associated with weight status. Participants were 6- to 9-year-old children ( = 63,215, 49.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBody mass index (BMI) is one of the key indicators used to measure the growth of children. It could be affected by the children's nutrition, which is essential for the proper development of the child. Nutrition of children could be affected by many environmental factors, for example, the socioeconomic environment of the family.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground And Aim: Research shows that regular engagement in physical activity in childhood is associated with multiple physical and psychosocial health benefits. The data on associations between children physical activity level and built environment in Lithuania are limited. The built environment is one of many variables thought to affect children physical activity level.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Until recently increasing prevalence of overweight and obesity among pediatric population in Europe and worldwide contributes to major well-known risks for metabolic consequences in later life. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of overweight/obesity among children and adolescents in Lithuania and assess its association with energy balance related behaviors as well as familial demographic and socioeconomic factors.
Methods: Cross-sectional study included 3990 7-17 years old schoolchildren from 40 schools of Kaunas region, Lithuania.
Objective: To assess to what extent eight behavioural health risks related to breakfast and food consumption and five behavioural health risks related to physical activity, screen time and sleep duration are present among schoolchildren, and to examine whether health-risk behaviours are associated with obesity.
Design: Cross-sectional design as part of the WHO European Childhood Obesity Surveillance Initiative (school year 2007/2008). Children's behavioural data were reported by their parents and children's weight and height measured by trained fieldworkers.
Background: Both sleep duration and screen time have been suggested to affect children's diet, although in different directions and presumably through different pathways. The present cross-sectional study aimed to simultaneously investigate the associations between sleep duration, screen time and food consumption frequencies in children.
Methods: The analysis was based on 10 453 children aged 6-9 years from five European countries that participated in the World Health Organization European Childhood Obesity Surveillance Initiative.
Background: Nutritional habits are a useful way to characterize whole diets and they are also known to be influenced by a wide range of social and economic factors. The above factors in each country may have different effect on children's eating habits. In Lithuania the data of children nutrition in association with socio-economic status of family is poor.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Schools are important settings for the promotion of a healthy diet and sufficient physical activity and thus overweight prevention.
Objective: To assess differences in school nutrition environment and body mass index (BMI) in primary schools between and within 12 European countries.
Methods: Data from the World Health Organization (WHO) European Childhood Obesity Surveillance Initiative (COSI) were used (1831 and 2045 schools in 2007/2008 and 2009/2010, respectively).