Rome, April 26 (beraking latest news Salute) – Chips, red meat and sugary drinks: these are the foods for which, during last year’s lockdown, there was a significant increase in consumption by children and adolescents. Against this increase there was also a decrease in the time dedicated to sports and motor activities. This is what emerges from a study conducted by a group of Italian and American researchers on a sample of 41 children and adolescents from Verona, in which lifestyles and eating habits were compared before and during last spring’s lockdown. The study, titled ‘Effects of Covid-19 lockdown on lifestyle behaviors in children with obesity living in Verona, Italy: a longitudinal study’, was published in the journal ‘Obesity. A research journal ‘. From the answers provided by the participants, it also emerged that in the face of the decrease in time spent in motor activities, the hours spent at the PC and those of sleep increased.
“The pandemic – comments Leo Venturelli, communications manager of the Italian Society of Preventive and Social Pediatrics (Sipps) – has brought about a process of transformation in the lives of parents and children: the family has had to support the children and young people during periods of closure of schools “.
The interruption of didactic activities in presence has, in fact, represented a problem not only from the educational and social point of view, but also from the food point of view. As confirmation, Venturelli recalls that “the school canteen guaranteed a balanced and nutritional contribution to all children, regardless of income and economic and family situation. With distance learning, lunch was resumed at home. The most fragile families had to make facing the situation, with the risk of administering highly processed meals with a high caloric value, but often unbalanced in terms of constituents: the effect was the increase in overweight in children “.
In consideration of these data, Sipps has been collaborating for some time with ‘Nutripiatto’, the nutrition project conceived by Nestlè, making three of its nutritionists available for scientific advice. “The ‘Nutripiatto’ project – explains Giuseppe Di Mauro, president of Sipps – has developed in Italy thanks to the scientific collaboration of our company and the Campus Biomedico University of Rome”.
“At this moment – he reiterates – the ‘Nutripiatto’, with its reasoned dietary proposals based both on the right balance of food components and on the creativity of the preparation, but also on the simplicity of the foods chosen, can be of fundamental importance in helping the parents in educating their children to a healthy diet, making balanced and correct food choices, with the active participation of children and teenagers in building the ideal dish “.
Micaela Gentilucci, nutritionist, who collaborates in scientific consultancy on behalf of Sipps, also specifies that “Italy continues to be, among the European countries, the one with the highest values of excess weight in the school-age population: the percentage of children in fact, overweight is 20.4% “.
“The guide ‘Nutripiatto’ – Di Mauro still points out – is a book for the family and the dish, provided as a visual aid, is a simple and intuitive system for everyone. 12-year-olds can ‘play’ by inserting raw foods to concretely understand how lunch or dinner is built, having a parent beside them who teaches them, in a simple way, to eat well and healthy. procedures means participating in food choices and receiving concrete quality educational messages from parents, who are themselves involved in this fun, but scientifically valid, health education activity “.