engleski

Beverage consumption, physical activity and smoking habits in relation to body mass index among university students in Primorsko-goranska County, Croatia

Objective: The prevalence of obesity is progressively increasing in the past two decades worldwide. The consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks among young people could lead to obesity because of imprecise and incomplete compensation for energy consumed in liquid form. Methods: Using data from self-reported questionnaires, multivariate regression of body mass index (BMI) of 945 male and female university students with average age 21.97 years was carried to examine the relative importance of beverage consumption, physical activity and smoking habits for maintaining healthy body mass. Results: There were 5.4% of underweight students, mostly females. Most of the students had desirable weight (80.8%), but 13.8% were overweight, mainly male. A negative association between BMI and using physical activity was found for both males and females. Smoking habits was positively associated to BMI among males but negatively among females. Consumption of fruit juices and soft drinks, hypothesized to be positively associated with BMI, were positively statistically significant among females for soft drinks (beta coefficient 0.08: 95% CI 0.01 to 0.16). Coffee was negatively associated to BMI, while tea, wine and strong alcoholic beverages were positively, but not significant. Beer was positively associated to BMI among females (0.07: 95% CI 0.01 to 0.15). Conclusion: Our results highlight the importance of physical activity to help reduce overweight and obesity among students, but focus on sugar-sweetened beverages would have no serious impact on BMI of students. Public health concern is for promotion of physical activity programs and for better nutrition education among university students.

beverages; physical activity; BMI; obesity; university students

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