Abstract
Background: Population-level health and nutrition surveys provide critical anthropometric data used to monitor trends of the prevalence of under nutrition and overweight in children under 5 years old, and overweight and obesity in the population over 5 years of age.Objective: Analyze the children malnutrition and overweight and obesity in children, teenagers and adults through the National Health and Nutrition Surveys information available from public databases.Materials and Methods: Comparable anthropometric data was gathered by five Mexican National Health and Nutrition Surveys (in Spanish, ENSANUT). In pre-school-age children, under nutrition status was identified through underweight (Z-score below −2 in weight-for-age), stunting (chronic malnutrition) (Z-score below −2 for length/height-for-age), or wasting (Z-score below −2, for weight-for-length/height); overweight status was defined as a body mass index (BMI, kg/m2) for age over +2. For school-age children and adolescents, a Z-score BMI between +1 and +2 deviations was defined as overweight, and between +2 and +5.5 as obesity. In adults (≥20 years of age), overweight status was classified as a BMI between 25.0 and 29.9, and obesity as ≥30.Results: The anthropometric data presented derives from the databases of five survey years of the Mexican National Health and Nutrition Survey: 2006, 2012, 2016, 2018, and 2020. They include a total of 210,915 subjects with complete anthropometric data (weight, length/height) distributed on five survey moments; subjects were categorized by age group: pre-school-age children (n = 25,968), school-age children (n = 42,255), adolescents (n = 39,275), and adults (n = 103,417). Prevalence of malnutrition by indicator was calculated: in pre-school-age children: low height- and weight-for-age, low weight-for-height, and overweight; and in school-age children, adolescents, and adults, the indicators calculated were overweight and obesity.Conclusions: Results demonstrate the importance of maintaining systematic, reliable, and timely national anthropometric data in the population, in order to detect and track trends and to form the basis of nutrition-related public policy.
Highlights
Reducing the global burden of malnutrition is a fundamental component of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, which include monitoring indicators of under nutrition, overweight, and obesity.Mexico has a history of over three decades conducting health and nutrition surveys as part of a nationwide monitoring system
The first national health and nutrition surveys were conducted by the Secretariat of Health (SoH) or the National Public Health Institute (INSP) and the operatives of the Health surveys were different from those of the nutrition surveys which only included mothers and children [1, 2]
In 2006, the nutrition and health surveys were combined into a single Mexican National Health and Nutrition Survey, which has since been applied four times, all of them conducted by INSP using similar methods and sampling procedures in order to allow comparison: 2006 [3], 2012 [4], 2016 at “Medio Camino (MC)” [5], and 2018–2019 [6]
Summary
Reducing the global burden of malnutrition is a fundamental component of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, which include monitoring indicators of under nutrition, overweight, and obesity.Mexico has a history of over three decades conducting health and nutrition surveys as part of a nationwide monitoring system. The National Health Surveys System in Mexico includes a series of multi-thematic surveys on health and nutrition topics; surveys are probabilistic and nationally representative. The results of these surveys have been key for evaluating the performance of the Mexican health system, providing precise, detailed, and representative information about the status of health and nutrition of the population and for planning health and nutrition policies. Population-level health and nutrition surveys provide critical anthropometric data used to monitor trends of the prevalence of under nutrition and overweight in children under 5 years old, and overweight and obesity in the population over 5 years of age
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