An initial study of healthy habits in first-year students of secondary education

Abstract

This research has made an initial general approach to the food situation and dietary habits (and to a lesser degree to physical activity) in a sample of 66 first-year students of secondary education. All this is due to the potential importance of the knowledge of these data to address possible programs of School Health Education. From the point of view of the approach to the food situation, using the Body Mass Index (BMI), the predominant is “Normal weight” (66.7%), followed by “Excess weight” (overweight + obesity, in 24.3%) and “Thinness” (in 9,0%).

In general, students have low values of alignment to Mediterranean-style dietary habits (51.1% of them are actually very poor values) and some better results for healthy physical activity, being por to 27.3% (both measured with the Krece Plus test). Finally, we have made a special study of breakfast habits and mid-morning intake or morning recess due to its importance for School Health and Food Education (EfS). It reveals that taking into account both, food quality (En-kid type, or the presence of dairy products, cereals and fruits) of morning intakes has significantly been improved (p <0.01) and would become to be “high” for 30.3% and “medium” for 45.4%; though it remains poor (low and / or bad) in 24.3% of the sample. The need to address proposals for EfS is put forward, to improve, for example, breakfast dietary habits especially using the seizure of Mm-morning recess. This is particularly advisable in overweight students (24.3%) who significantly (p <0.05) tend not to perform or take only a few breakfast foods among dairy products and quality cereals.