Fast Food Consumption Patterns and Childhood Overweight/Obesity in Dhaka City, Bangladesh

Abstract

A descriptive cross-sectional study was carried out among 106 school going overweight and obese children (fifty boys
and fifty-six girls) selected from four schools of Dhaka city. The aim of this study was to assess the overweight or
obesity pattern among the children and their fast-food eating behavior. Samples were selected by simple random
sampling during the time frame of September, 2017 to April, 2018. Data Analysis was conducted by using IBM SPSS
16.0. The average weight of the school children was 41.54 ± 9.65 kg, average height was 132.2 ± 10.82 cm and
average Mid Upper Arm Circumference (MUAC) was 24.83 ± 2.8 cm. It was found that about 28.3% children were
overweight, 55.7% children were obese and rest of the children were severely obese. The study revealed that about
21.7% children had consumed fast food every day in a week, about 40.6% children had fast-food 2-3 days weekly and
28.3% children had fast food 4-5 days in a week. Among the fast food items, Cake/Noodles/Pastry were consumed by
76.4% respondents, Chocolate/ Ice-cream by 67.9% respondents, Chips was consumed by 67.0% of the respondents
and Burger/Pizza/Sandwich were consumed by 62.3% of the respondents. About 23.6% children preferred having
nuggets, 17.9% children sweets, 12.3% children chicken ball and 7.5% children biriyani. It was also shown that about
36.8% children had fast-food as tiffin and at evening as snacks. It was observed that fast food eating pattern is highly
prevalent among the overweight and obese school going children and this food habit need to be changed in order to
prevent diabetes, high blood pressure, arthritis, high cholesterol level at adulthood.