A snapshot of European children’s eating habits : results from the fourth round of the WHO European Childhood Obesity Surveillance Initiative (COSI)

Williams, Julianne (author), Starc, Gregor (author)

Consuming a healthy diet in childhood helps to protect against malnutrition and noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). This cross-sectional study described the diets of 132,489 children aged six to nine years from 23 countries participating in round four (2015–2017) of the WHO European Childhood Obesity Surveillance Initiative (COSI). Children’s parents or caregivers were asked to complete a questionnaire that contained indicators of energy-balance-related behaviors (including diet). For each country, we calculated the percentage of children who consumed breakfast, fruit, vegetables, sweet snacks or soft drinks “every day”, “most days (four to six days per week)”, “some days (one to three days per week)”, or “never or less than once a week”. We reported these results stratified by country, sex, and region. On a daily basis, most children (78.5%) consumed breakfast, fewer than half (42.5%) consumed fruit, fewer than a quarter (22.6%) consumed fresh vegetables, and around one in ten consumed sweet snacks or soft drinks (10.3% and 9.4%, respectively); however, there were large between-country differences. This paper highlights an urgent need to create healthier food and drink environments, reinforce health systems to promote healthy diets, and continue to support child nutrition and obesity surveillance.

• Language: English
• Keywords: nutrition, child, obesity, surveillance, health, noncommunicable diseases, children, fruit, vegetables, soft drinks
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FŠ - Faculty of Sport
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2020
• Number of pages: 14 str.
• Numbering: Vol. 12, iss. 8, art. 2481
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-134340
• ISSN on article: 2072-6643
• DOI: 10.3390/nu12082481
• COBISS.SI-ID: 107256323

Copyright

V članku navedeno: "© 2020 by the World Health Organization. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution IGO License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo/legalcode), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited."

• Publication date in RUL: 07.01.2022

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Nutrients
• Shortened title: Nutrients
• Publisher: MDPI
• ISSN: 2072-6643
• COBISS.SI-ID: 2948140

Licences

• License: CC BY 3.0, Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported
• Link: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en
• Description: You are free to reproduce and redistribute the material in any medium or format. You are free to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially. You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
• Licensing start date: 01.08.2020

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• Funder: Other - Other funder or multiple funders