O quanto se sabe sobre a relação entre sobrepeso/obesidade e desempenho escolar?

Abstract

In recent years there was an increase in the incidence of child and adolescent overweight / obesity. The influence of physical condition on the mental health of children and adolescents, their cognitive function and related aspects, such as school performance and future socio-economic success has motivated many studies. The school performance in children and adolescents is influenced by intrinsic factors (general health, neurological, psychiatric disorders), extrinsic factors (environment, family, school and community context in which these students are entered) and aspects both, with impact on individual learning conditions, such as motivation and discipline. Among the extrinsic factors, some nutritional aspects are studied for decades and the influence of malnutrition on learning is well documented. However the increase of children and adolescents with overweight / obesity has aroused greater interest in the effects of these conditions on learning. The interest in the subject dates back to 1967 with the study of Canning and Mayer. The aim of this work is to verify through an integrative review published studies that relate overweight / obese school performance of children and adolescents. Articles published between 2009 - 2014 and studied children and / or adolescents 2-21 years were surveyed. Key-words: overweight and / or obesity, cognition and / or cognitive, school performance and / or school achievement, academic performance and / or academic achievement and executive function, were used in different combinations in the databases of platforms Lilacs, PubMed and SciELO. The search resulted in 13 studies that met the search criteria, none of which was developed with the Brazilian population. The results show that the samples and methods used by the various studies were varied and not always the information consonants. However, the relationship between overweight / obesity and performance in language, math and vocabulary found, besides the relationship with important for learning cognitive functions such as attention, memory and executive function.