Filling childhood with health program: a fun strategy to encourage healthy habits in children

Abstract

Sedentary lifestyle and inadequate diet are associated with 2.6 billion deaths each year. Health education could improve health habits in childhood. We investigated the effects of a health education program on physical activity (PA) level, eating habits, body composition, and cardiorespiratory fitness in schoolchildren.  A total of 50 children from Brazilian public school were evaluated into a PA level and food consumption (questionnaire), cardiorespiratory fitness (PACER), and body composition (skinfolds), allocated to either an 8-week intervention at Fun Education Group (FEG, n=19, 8.2±0.5yr) or control group (CG, n=31, 8.1±0.5yr). FEG was exposed to an educative website (1h - TOODS KIDS), filled a sticker album according to habits (PA and eating) of each weekday, and families received instructions (leaflets and lecture) on how to improve their habits. The generalized linear models analysis revealed an improvement to FEG at cardiorespiratory fitness (6.4 laps, p=0.042; and 0.4 km/h, p=0.031), more fruits and vegetable consumption (1.4 unities, p=0.029) and body fat reduction (-1.5%, p=0.001), compared to CG.  The participation at Program suggest that a short period of feasible intervention, with low-cost materials, aroused and motivated children to healthier habits with positive effects on cardiorespiratory fitness, body fat, and consumption of fruits and vegetable.