The Relationship between 5-Year-Old Children’s Weight Percentiles and Their Family Dietary Habits

Childhood Nutrition plays an important role in people's health. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relation between family nutritional status and the body mass index (BMI) of children.
This observational cross-sectional-analytical study considered documents of 2697 kids with five years of age who were under the auspices of Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran in 2019. Their related documents as well as their nutritional status were registered in the Iranian integrated health information system. Household demographic information including family nutritional information like fruit consumption, vegetable consumption, and daily dairy consumption, fast food consumption per week and type of oil consumed were questioned. Based on the weight percentile, they were categorized in four groups underweight, normal, obesity and overweight.
There were significant differences between the frequencies of the participants’ consuming low or high daily amounts (under 2 and more than 2 shares) of the nutritional components (fruit, veg, dairy, and fast food) in each weight category (P <0.001). The frequencies of the consumers of liquid oil, in different weight categories, were also significantly different with the frequencies of those who used a combination of solid and liquid oils (P <0.001). However, there was not a significant relationship between the different consumed nutritional components and the BMI (P>0.05). Moreover, the children’s BMI was not significantly correlated with education, smoking and age of mothers.
The results of the study showed that the daily consumption of fruits, vegetables, dairy products, different types of oils consumed and food consumption per week significantly correlated with weight categories of the five-year-old children under study. Therefore, in order to have a healthier population, it is critical to evaluate the nutritional condition of children during this period.