Parents’ perception of the nutritional status of their children

Abstract

Introduction: Parents’ difficult perception of the nutritional status of their children impairs health promotion and disease prevention.

Objective: To identify the perception of parents regarding the nutritional status of their children.

Materials and methods: Cross-sectional study with anthropometric data of preschool children from the city of Gravataí, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, and questionnaire with the parents to identify the body image through the Tiggemann silhouettes scale and nutritional status the purpose of comparing the information provided by those responsible with the actual nutritional diagnosis of the children.

Results: Among the preschool children evaluated, 36% were eutrophic and 64% presented a nutritional risk. 100% of the parents classified as normal the nutritional status of their children. According to the body image indicated 35.7% of the parents marked the same image to define the nutritional status of the children. Regarding the comparison between the perception of the parents and the real diagnosis of the children, 62.5% of the overweight children were underestimated by their parents.

Conclusion: All those responsible identified their children as normal in relation to nutritional status. However, parents’ perception of body weight tends to be distorted mainly among overweight children.