Javier Arturo Hall López; Paulina Yesica Ochoa Martínez; Juan Carlos Borbón Román & Luis Roberto Monreal Ortíz

The aim of this work was to estimate the prevalence of body fat, abdominal obesity and nutritional state in the students of the elementary school Salvador Jimenez Gomez in Mexicali Baja California. Mexico. Six hundred twenty-one children of 6 to 13 years old were studied, to determine the body fat, abdominal obesity and nutritional state, anthropometric measurements were taken and medial calf skinfolds, waist circumference, weight and height, body fat was determined according to the slaughter equation, abdominal obesity was determined ≥ 90 percentile according whit gender and age and Epi Info version 3.3.2 software was used to classify the overweight (≥ 85th percentile and < 95th percentile BMI for age and gender) and obesity (≥ 95th percentile BMI for age and gender) and through the body mass index (BMI). In our results, 19.1% of the students had overweight and 25.1% obesity. Combined overweight and obesity prevalence in boys was 51.3% while in girls was 37.4%. These results clearly show high prevalence of overweight and obesity in these children, in addition the children of this study were more overweight and obese than Mexican children average. It concludes that efforts should be made in this school to develop physical activity and nutrition programs to help stem rates of overweight and obesity.

KEY WORDS: Body fat; Overweight; Nutritional state; Elementary school students.

HALL, L. J. A.; OCHOA, M. P. Y.; BORBÓN, R. J. C. & MONREAL, O. L. R. Prevalence of body fat, abdominal obesity and nutritional state in the students of an elementary school in Mexicali Baja California, México. Int. J. Morphol., 31(4):1269-1275, 2013.