“GIOCAMPUS” - An effective school-based intervention for breakfast promotion and overweight risk reduction
Main Article Content
Keywords
Breakfast skipping, obesity, overweight, food, nutrition
Abstract
The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of a campaign promoting breakfast in primary school-children from the city of Parma, Italy, where 22 % of peer school-children had reported in 2005 to skip breakfast. Two groups of children were interviewed by a multiple choice questionnaire on their breakfast habits. Group 1 counted only the children who underwent the intensive campaign (n. 341), and Group 2 a number of matched peers who did not attend any breakfast-promoting program (n. 291). Children who did not eat breakfast were found to be more numerous in Group 2 (17.5 %) than in Group 1 (8.0 %; p=0.0001). In the Group 2 the percentage of overweight (18.4 %) was higher compared to Group 1 patients (11.7 %; p=0.022). No significant difference in obesity percentage (8.9 vs 5.0 %; p=0.071). Seventy five percent of children in Group I and the 25% of children in Group 2 (p=0.031) had one or two parents who had reported to skip routinely breakfast. Children with one or both parents used to skip breakfast had a greater odds ratio of 3.04 and 3 respectively of skipping breakfast compared to the children with parents who had regularly breakfast (p=0.0002). Compared to the children tested in 2005, children admitted to the Giocampus program showed: a significant decrease in breakfasting (22 vs 8 %; p=0.0001), a significant decrease in overweight (18.5 vs 11.7 %; p=0.003) but not in obesity (7.5 vs 5.0 %; p=0.138) status; a significant increase in consumption of cereals (p=0.0001) and fruit (p=0.0001). In conclusion, an intensive breakfast-centred strategy seems to be effective in breakfast promotion and in overweight risk decrease.