Estado nutricional de crianças em idade pré-escolar

Introduction: One of the health challenges for the twenty-first century is related to the increased prevalence of childhood obesity, assuming the monitoring of nutritional status fundamental importance to the harmonious development and a healthy adulthood. Aim: Classify the nutritional status of preschool-aged children. Materials and Methods: No experimental, descriptive and cross-study. Sample of 87 children, distributed by two kindergartens of the metropolitan area of Lisbon. Data collection held in the first six months of 2014. For data analysis we used descriptive statistics. Results: 28.74% of the children were overweight. Of these, 19.54% had pre-obesity and 9.20% obesity. Conclusion: The prevalence of overweight children in this sample is high. The promotion of health literacy should be initiated as early as possible in order to enable the child and provide it with the tools to make healthy choices throughout life.