International Journal of Contemporary Pediatrics | July-August 2017 | Vol 4 | Issue 4 Page 1434 International Journal of Contemporary Pediatrics Dasgupta A et al. Int J Contemp Pediatr. 2017 Jul;4(4):1434-1438 http://www.ijpediatrics.com pISSN 2349-3283 | eISSN 2349-3291 Original Research Article Influencers of childhood over nutrition: a cross sectional study among primary school children in Kolkata, West Bengal, India Aparajita Dasgupta, Aritra Bhattacharyya*, Bobby Paul, Lina Bandyopadhayay INTRODUCTION Prevalence of childhood overnutrition (obesity and overweight) found to be rising in many developing countries including India in recent decades in many studies by different researchers, it is ranging from 2.9% to 14.3% which makes our youth vulnerable to many life- threatening consequences. 1 Childhood is the best time to determine the nutritional status and take action accordingly because this is the most fertile period of one’s life when seeding of proper dietary habits and nutritional advice will bloom throughout his/her life and will also improve the total health of an individual as well as that of the whole nation. Therefore, early childhood is now recognised as a key target in the prevention of overweight and obesity, and the knowledge that children gain at this time about food and its health benefits can influence their dietary choices and preferences in later ABSTRACT Background: Changing trends of dietary habits and lack of physical exercise force the world to face a modern era epidemic obesity which also affects our children counterpart. Childhood obesity is now a challenge of public health to combat with. Prevalence of childhood overnutrition (obesity and overweight) found to be rising in many developing countries including India in recent decades in many studies by different researchers, it is ranging from 2.9% to 14.3%, which makes our youth vulnerable to many life-threatening consequences. Methods: It was a school based cross sectional study done in primary schools of Barasat among 548 students of 3-11 years of age group. Parental perception towards child eating behaviour were assessed with the help of CEBQ questionnaire. Results: Among the total 548 students, as per BMI 38% were overweight and obese. Then hierarchical multiple logistic regression revealed that at Step one socio-demographic factors accounted for 16.9% of the variation in overnutrition status. Introducing the responses on selected life style factors in step two and CEBQ responses in final step explained an additional 9.9% and 5% of variation respectively. At all three-level model correctly predicted 62- 70.3% of the dependent variables. Conclusions: The high proportion of over nourished children were found in our study, and this found to be related with parental perception about few lifestyle and child eating behaviour which calls for further research and interventional programme for this alarming topic in this age group. Keywords: Child eating behaviour questionnaire, Child hood obesity, Eating behaviour, Over nutrition, Parental perception Department of Preventive and Social Medicine, All India Institute of Hygiene and Public Health, Kolkata, India Received: 15 April 2017 Accepted: 09 May 2017 *Correspondence: Dr. Aritra Bhattacharyya, E-mail: dr.aritra.bhattacharya@gmail.com Copyright: © the author(s), publisher and licensee Medip Academy. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18203/2349-3291.ijcp20172681