Can Nutrition Education in Primary Schools be an Efficient Way to Prevent Obesity in Adult Life? A Review of the Literature

The global prevalence of childhood obesity is expected to reach 60 million by 2020. Childhood obesity is now an accepted as a public health problem because of the serious impact on children's health and health care costs. It is shown that obese children are more likely to stay obese into adulthood and to develop cardiovascular diseases at a younger age. In addition to complications related to physical state, obese children can experiment psychosocial consequences such as discrimination, low self-esteem and loneliness. Given the difficulties involved in weight loss and the costly treatment of obesity, initiating obesity prevention at an early age has reached general consensus. Excess weight is influenced by complex interactions among genetic, biological, and environmental factors. Although genetic and biological factors are indeed important, they cannot fully explain this current global trends, given that factors are also underlying causes of such phenomenon. Therefore, inadequate food intake (quality and quantity of food) and sedentary (low o none physical activity) should be the primary focus to work to prevent or mitigate childhood obesity. Given the significance of this early on an individual’s life course, schools are a primary setting for health promotion as they represent a micro-environments in which children spend a substantial part of their time and have a key role in influencing their daily choices. For this purpose, important targets are increaseing nutrition knowledge, improveing dietary habits and physical education. Moreover, schools can provide an ideal setting for nutrition interventions as they serve as a focal point to engage families, educators, administrators and community members to implement effective and sustainable aid for children and adolescents. On the other side, a school-based nutrition approach should also provide a comprehensive nutrition programs and a multi-level approaches spanning from a child's home to very school environment. This review therefore provides a general evaluation of effectiveness of a school-based approach and summarizes fundamental features of programs that have achieved results.