Breakfast, nutritional status, and socioeconomic outcome measures among primary school students from the City of Salta: A cross-sectional study

Abstract

Introduction: Socioeconomic context and family dynamics are determining factors when considering eating habits and nutritional status among students. It has been demonstrated that skipping breakfast or having a light breakfast has an unfavorable impact on nutritional status.

Objetive: To establish a relationship among breakfast, sociodemographic outcome measures, and nutritional status among students attending public schools in the urban and peri-urban areas of the City of Salta.

Population and methods: Descriptive, crosssectional study. Purposive, non-probability sampling of students attending urban and periurban primary schools (aged 9-13, boys and girls). Outcome measures: breakfast at home (habit, "enKid" breakfast quality, frequency, duration), nutritional status (body mass index, Z-score, World Health Organization), and sociodemographic outcome measures (family type, level of education, employment, parents' breakfast habit, commensality). Analysis of frequency, associations, logistic regression, odds ratio, confidence interval, p < 0.05, WHO AnthroPlus and SPSS v18 software.

Results: Two hundred and eighty-three students were assessed; 49.8% attended urban schools. Overweight or obesity was observed in 46.0%. Also, 55.1% skipped breakfast at home on the day of the assessment; among those who did have breakfast, 79.5% had a poor or very-poor quality meal. Among those who skipped breakfast, 40.7% of the girls and 54.7% of the boys were overweight or obese. A greater socioeconomic vulnerability and a higher percentage of students who attended school without having breakfast were observed in peri-urban schools.

Conclusions: Eventually, the probability of skipping breakfast was associated with having a large family, absence of parental breakfast habit, a low level of maternal education, having breakfast alone, and being obese.