Dragan Bacovic; Pavle Malovic; Erol Vrevic; Danilo Bojanic & Milovan Ljubojevic

Prevention and correction of overweight in children and adolescents is also very important for many reasons. According to previous research, the problem tends to vary according to sex, and different ages and the lifestyle in rural and urban areas has changed drastically in recent years and decades. Regarding the above-mentioned, the main goal of this research was to determine the nutritional status of young school children in urban and rural areas of Montenegro in relation to sex and age. The sample in this research has consisted of children aged 6 and 9 (younger school age). The total sample in this research is 800 male and female children who belong to the urban and rural areas of Montenegro. The sample of variables used in this study was: body mass index-percentile values (BMI), and waist circumference and body height ratio (WHtR) which were used as indicators to assess nutritional status. Based on obtained results it could be generally concluded that there are no statistically significant differences in nutritional status between primary school children from urban and rural areas of Montenegro, which is the opposite of what was expected based on previous research, but also which is very important since all subjects in the future can be treated as homogeneous groups when it comes to the impact of environment and lifestyle on the nutrition status of younger school children. On the other hand, it is important to emphasize that the main limitation of this research is that measurements were carried out in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the recommendation could be that after the end of the pandemic, special "COVID teams" should be formed, which would consist of experts from various fields of physical culture, sports, and medicine, all with the aim of influencing possible problems with nutritional status and physical activity of young school children caused by a pandemic.

KEY WORDS: Nutritional status; Level of physical activity; Young school children; Urban and rural areas; Montenegro.

BACOVIC, D.; MALOVIC, P.; VREVIC, E.; BOJANIC, D. & LJUBOJEVIC, M. Nutritional status of younger primary school children in urban and rural areas of Montenegro in relation to sex and age during COVID-19 pandemic: a national study. Int. J. Morphol., 40(5):1289-1293, 2022.