Associação da frequência de consumo do café da manhã com adiposidade corporal de estudantes universitários

Abstract

The transition from high school to university is represented by an important change in lifestyle-related behaviors among students who stay for long periods at university. Weight gain in this population is the result of a set of behaviors related to lifestyle, including changes in the frequency of meals consumption. Objectives: To analyze the frequency that breakfast is consumed and its association with body adiposity in university students. Method: A cross-sectional study with participants from Longitudinal Study on the Lifestyle and Health of University Students (ELESEU). A total of 2.79 university students from both genders and ages from 16 to 25, who are enrolled in full-time courses in the years of 2015, 2016, 2017 e 2018, at a public university in the Midwest region of Brazil, were evaluated. Sociodemographic, economic and lifestyle information were obtained by self-applied questionnaires. The anthropometric measurements included body mass (weight), height and waist circumference. The study outcome variables were overweight, obesity, high waist circumference and high waist-to-height ratio. The breakfast consumption, as indepedennt variable of the study, were evaluated in the following categories: regular breakfast consumption (5 to 7 times a week), irregular breakfast consumption (1 to 4 times a week) and breakfast omission or skipping breakfast (never or almost never). Associations were estimated through the use of adjusted models of the Poisson regression with robust variance. Results: After adjusting for potentials confounding factors, among men, the omission of breakfast kept being associated with obesity (PRadj= 1.64; IC 95%=1.01;2.66), high waist circumference (PRadj=2.31; IC 95%=1.39;3.83) and high waist-to-height ratio (PRadj= 1.78; IC 95%=1.26;2.51). Amongst women, the irregular consumption of breakfast was associated to obesity (PRadj= 1.86; IC 95%=1.13;3.05), high waist circumference (PRadj= 1.62; IC 95%=1.12;2.32) and high waist-to-height ratio (PRadj=1.70; IC 95%=1.16;2.49); and skipping breakfast was associated to high waist circumference (PRadj= 1.59; IC 95%=1.04;2.42) and high waist-to-height ratio (PRadj=1.67; IC 95%=1.07;2.63). Conclusion: Skipping breakfast or the irregular breakfast consumption had a direct association with total adiposity and with the central pattern of body fat distribution amongst students.