Italian school-age children are among the most obese in Europe and those in southern Italy are more obese than children in the north. The data are provided by OKkio alla Salute, the national surveillance system of the Istituto Superiore di Sanità, which indicate that in Italy about 30% of school-age children are overweight or obese. According to the latest survey, 9,3% of children are obese and about 21% are overweight and this percentage of obese children and adolescents increased by almost 3 times in 2016 compared to 1975. However, it must be recognized that compared to the 2002 data there was a slight improvement from 38% to 30% (overweight and obesity overall data). However, even if this decrease indicates a positive trend, we must not underestimate the seriousness of the phenomenon which still involves one in three children. Furthermore, the picture is made more complex by the fact that the decrease involved families with higher incomes and not those in economic difficulty. The lowest income families are usually those with a lower level of education and therefore less able to choose healthy foods, becoming easy prey for marketing thanks also to the lower cost of the “junk food” and the fact that boys like these foods.
In this scenario, the role of families is fundamental: mothers, who usually take care of feeding their children, often see food as a means of exchanging affection and on the other hand they don't always judge their children objectively. According to OKkio health surveys, 38% of mothers of overweight or obese children think their child is of adequate weight (or even underweight) and only 30% think their child eats too much.
But not only parents, grandparents can also play an important role. From a meta-analysis published in PlosOne, in which 56 scientific studies conducted in various European and non-European countries were evaluated, it emerged that grandparents have an important influence on the diet and physical activity of their grandchildren. The study showed that the need to rely on grandparents often leads to the prevalence of their rules and not those of the parents, with a negative impact on the food education of the grandchildren, due to different dietary habits of the grandparents, divergent from those of the parents, and distant from an appropriate diet for their grandchildren. The study also shows that grandparents often tend to give foods rich in sugar or fat and meals and portions that are too abundant, creating a sense of frustration in parents who prefer to give healthier foods to their children.
Among the actions that can be promoted to curb the phenomenon of obesity and being overweight, experts agree widely on good food practices: how to eat breakfast, consume a snack suitable for one's needs and exercise. These practices are a useful means to prevent the onset of eating disorders and improve school performance in children.
The snack, like for breakfast, is a very important habit; suggested by nutritionists and paediatricians, it fits into the "five meals" diet, representing a time of day to replenish the body with energy and to control appetite in view of lunch or dinner. For those who eat an adequate breakfast, a small mid-morning snack (5-10% of daily energy) is sufficient to keep blood sugar constant and, therefore, attention during school work hours, thus arriving less hungry at the end of the day. 'lunch time. On the other hand, a hearty snack risks overloading the energy intake, reducing concentration and learning ability, at the same time reducing the appetite for the next meal, altering the regular rhythm of the meal. The data that emerged from a study conducted in Sassari by the SIAN of Asl 1, to evaluate the quality of the canteen meal, established that children did not like the meal served in the school canteen, because they were full from a too abundant mid-morning snack. Among the most responsible foods, the researchers have identified: sandwich with salami, red pizza and savory focaccia, sweet or savory snacks of various kinds, which for the quantity consumed exceeded 10% of the recommended energy. These results are in line with the national data of OKkio alla Salute which reveal that 65% of Italian children consume a hearty snack.
The optimal snack must not only be "good" but also healthy. Few rules can be useful for organizing a snack that responds to these two principles, including:
• Vary the snack often, so as to vary the nutrients it provides: a portion of dried fruit, fresh fruit or a smoothie, or a snack, or a yogurt, or a small sweet or savory sandwich, or 3-4 biscuits . Other proposals that should not be missing are a slice of bread and oil or bread and tomato, to introduce the youngest to the ancient flavors characteristic of the Mediterranean diet. You have to get used to alternating flavors with sweet and savory snacks to avoid accumulating too much sugar or too much salt during the week. And it is also important to get kids used to eating foods of different textures, soft foods and more consistent foods, by virtue of the fact that foods that need to be chewed for a long time help to warn the physiological signals of satiety early.
• For baked and packaged products, remember to read the nutritional values on the label. The snack must not exceed 5-10% of the daily energy, in practice around 100-200 kcal, with the highest values for children who do regular physical activity. Too often it happens that for a few occasions of energy expenditure, such as going to the swimming pool, gym, etc., twice a week for an hour, parents who are too attentive go overboard by offering their children snacks that are too energetic, sometimes with an excess of simple sugars or fats such as carbonated and sugary drinks, salty and fatty snacks, etc.
• Enjoy your snack! Try to consume it without being distracted by watching tv or one smartphone, rather than sitting in front of a pc. This would not only reduce it screen time, the alarming amount of time children spend in front of a monitor, but are unaffected by the passive conditioning exercised by advertising. On the contrary, we should eat by enhancing the sensory component which, if trained through the repeated proposal of notoriously unwelcome foods such as fruit and vegetables, allows on the one hand the acquisition of new flavors and at the same time allows us to better perceive the signals that regulate hunger and satiety.
But childhood obesity in our country is not only due to incorrect nutrition such as excessive consumption of simple sugars and fats, but also to an often too sedentary lifestyle. According to ISTAT data, the share of sedentary children is very high in the 3-5 age group (48,8%) and decreases in the following age groups, but starts to rise again and remains high starting from the 18-year age group. 19 years old (20,8%). These data reinforce the results of the 2016 survey by OKkio alla Salute which confirms the low tendency to physical activity of Italian children: 34% of children devote a maximum of one day a week (at least 1 hour) to structured physical activity and almost 1 in 4 children dedicates a maximum of one day a week (at least 1 hour) to playing movement games. Also in this case the negative primacy is held by the children who live in the South who are less active than those who live in the North, furthermore the girls are less active than the boys.
Carrying out regular physical activity not only improves the psycho-physical well-being conditions of the child but in adolescents it has been observed that it also influences various aspects of lifestyle, favoring the adoption of healthy behaviors including correct eating habits, renunciation of alcohol and cigarette smoke. An active child almost certainly helps to become an active and healthy adult with a lower risk of many chronic diseases such as hypertension, high cholesterol, heart disease, obesity, diabetes and some types of cancer.
But for physical activity we must not think only of sport (soccer, dance, volleyball, martial arts, etc.), but also of recreational activity. Once upon a time, after school, our games took place outdoors, we played in the courtyard or in the field near the house: tag, steal the flag, hide and seek, guard and robbers, hopscotch, etc. Today the unaccustomedness to movement play is such that it is not unusual to see children – even in those open-air places such as parks or gardens – caught up and lost each in his own smartphone or similar appliances. A famous song said: "get sent by your mother to get milk" today these opportunities have disappeared, just as it is rarer to see children who go to school on foot but increasingly accompanied by their parents by car, than on rainy days, if they could they would go right into the classrooms.
Promoting a healthy lifestyle must therefore take into account the important component of energy expenditure which must be promoted not only with participation in structured sports practices but encouraged through many daily actions such as for example taking the stairs on foot, going to school by public transport public, take your dog for a walk or better yet take a parent for a walk in this case the whole family would gain health.
