ORIGINAL ARTICLE Relationship between health behaviour and body mass index in the Serbian adult population: data from National Health Survey 2013 Milos ˇZ ˇ . Maksimovic ´ . Jelena M. Gudelj Rakic ´ . Hristina D. Vlajinac . Nadja D. Vasiljevic ´ . Jelena M. Marinkovic ´ Received: 6 July 2015 / Revised: 2 November 2015 / Accepted: 4 November 2015 / Published online: 18 November 2015 Ó Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+) 2015 Abstract Objectives To determine relationship between health behaviour and body mass index (BMI) in a Serbian adult population. Methods Study population included adults aged 20 and more years. A stratified, two-stage national representative random sampling approach was used for the selection of the survey sample. Results Regarding BMI, out of the 12,461 subjects of both sexes, 2.4 % were underweight, 36.5 % overweight and 22.4 % obese. Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that both in men and women, risk factors for obesity were former smoking, irregular eating breakfast and low physical activity level, while in women only risk of obesity was associated with alcohol consumption. In both sexes, risk factors for overweight were former smoking and low physical activity level, and in women additionally those were alcohol consumption, irregular eating breakfast, always adding salt to meals and con- sumption of 2–4 portions of fruit daily. Smoking and irregular eating of breakfast in men were risk factors for underweight. Conclusions Physical activity, alcohol consumption, smoking, irregular breakfast consumption, adding salt to meals, frequency of vegetable and fruit consumption were related to BMI in adult Serbian population. Keywords Body mass index Á Health behaviour Á Cross-sectional study Introduction Overweight and obesity are increasing in prevalence rep- resenting growing public health problem worldwide. According to estimates of the World Health Organization (WHO 2013), more than 50 % of the adult population in the WHO European Region are overweight and more than 20 % are clinically obese. Data from the National Health Survey (2014) show that 35.1 % of the adult population in Serbia (C20 years old) are overweight (BMI 25.0–29.9 kg/ m 2 ) and 21.2 % obese (BMI C 30 kg/m 2 ). Obesity pre- disposes people to a series of risk factors for chronic non- communicable diseases (Wyatt et al. 2006; James et al. 2004) that contribute to the highest burden of disease in Serbia (Atanaskovic-Markovic et al. 2003). Although obesity has a strong genetic background (Heberbrand et al. 2000), health behaviours, such as unhealthy diet, physical inactivity, sedentary lifestyle, alcohol consumption and smoking cessation, are com- monly considered to be the underlying cause of the increase of body weight (Borodulin et al. 2010; Rodriguez Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00038-015-0765-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. M. Z ˇ . Maksimovic ´(&) Á N. D. Vasiljevic ´ Institute of Hygiene and Medical Ecology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia e-mail: milos.maksimovic@mfub.bg.ac.rs J. M. Gudelj Rakic ´ Institute of Public Health of Serbia ‘‘Dr Milan Jovanovic ´ Batut’’, Belgrade, Serbia H. D. Vlajinac Institute of Epidemiology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia J. M. Marinkovic ´ Institute of Medical Statistics and Informatics, Faculty of Medicine, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia Int J Public Health (2016) 61:57–68 DOI 10.1007/s00038-015-0765-9 123