No abstract

Objective: The objective of the present work was to quantify mothers' misclassification of pre-school children's weight status and to determine factors associated with the maternal misperception. Design: A representative sample of 2287 children aged 2-5 years was examined (GENESIS study). Mothers' perceptions of their child's weight status and the children's and mothers' anthropometric and other characteristics (sociodemographic and lifestyle) were recorded. Results: Almost 38 % of mothers underestimated their child's weight status. The frequency of underestimation was much higher among 'at risk of being overweight' and 'overweight' children (88?3 % and 54?5 %, respectively) compared with 'underweight/ normal-weight' children (18?0 %, P , 0?001). Multiple logistic regression modelling revealed that the likelihood of mothers' underestimation of their child's weight status was significantly higher in boys, in children engaging in physical activity for less than 3 h/week and in children whose mothers had low education status, compared with their counterparts. Moreover, the higher the BMI-for-age Z-score, the greater the odds that the mother would underestimate her child's weight status. Conclusions:The current study demonstrated that more than one-third of mothers misclassify their children's weight status as being lower than the actual. Given that mother's weight perception might be an important determinant of child's body weight development, clinicians and health professionals should help mothers correctly classify their children's weight status, which could potentially help in the early prevention of overweight and obesity.

The current findings suggest that almost one third of Greek preschoolers exceed the limit of 2 h/day TV viewing and that parental TV viewing time may be the most important determinant of children's TV viewing time.

The aim of the current work was to evaluate the effect of preschoolers' television (TV) watching time on the prevalence of obesity even after controlling for their total energy intake and their physical activity status. A representative sample of 2,374 Greek children aged 1–5 years was examined (“Growth, Exercise and Nutrition Epidemiological Study in preSchoolers”, GENESIS study). Children's TV watching time on a usual weekday and at a usual weekend was recorded. The overall mean of children's TV viewing time was 1.32 h/day. The majority of participants (74.0%) spent <2 h/day watching TV whereas only 3.1% spent >4 h/day in front of a TV set. Overall, 65.2% of participants were normal weight, 17.2% were overweight, and the rest 17.6% were obese. The prevalence of obesity was significantly higher among those with TV viewing time ≥2 h/day (21.7%) compared to those watching TV <2 h/day (16.1%, P = 0.003). TV viewing time remained significantly associated with the likelihood of being obese even after controlling for potential confounders (i.e., socio demographic and other characteristics and physical activity status) only among children aged 3–5 years. However, further adjusting for children's total energy intake revealed that the association between the TV viewing time and the probability of being obese was no longer statistically significant. On the other hand, physical activity status continued to be an independent factor of being obese. The current findings support the hypothesis that the effect of TV viewing time on childhood obesity is independent of physical activity status and may be attributed to the increased total energy intake during TV watching.

These findings suggest that promoting MVPA may be have a beneficial effect on attention capacity, an important component of cognition, in adolescents.