Abstract

Obesity and overweight are the major problem among children and adult in developed countries. The most important risk factors for childhood obesity and overweight are obese parent, socioeconomic condition, birth weight, breast feeding etc. Breast feeding is the most important strategies for reducing childhood obesity and overweight. Due to the threats followed by obesity the aim of this study is investigating the relationship between childhood obesity and those related factors which affects children. This is a case-control study which was conducted on 400 daughter students in the second grade of primary school in 2014. In this study, case group consisted of a number of 200 obese and overweight children and control group consisted of a number of 200 normal weight children that were selected by cluster sampling and the data were analyzed by SPSS version 21. Average and standard deviation of mother's age during pregnancy in case group was 32±5 (years) and in control group was 24±3 and a significant variance was observed between the groups. Among the investigated variances, BMI (p=0.01), type of the milk (breast milk+ powdered milk) (p=0.0021), the age of introducing complementary feeding (p=0.028), birth weight and obesity (p=0.005) were significantly associated with overweight and obesity in children. Results showed that breast feeding has a protective effect on overweight and obesity in childhood and also obesity in childhood is related to mother's weight, the age of starting complementary feeding, birth weight, type of the milk during infancy.