Fast Food Intake and Prevalence of Overweight/Obesity in Students: do Eating Habits have a Differential Impact on Gender?

Introduction: Nowadays, eating fast food and spending money on home away foods have been increased rapidly. As a result, the prevalence rate of both fast food consumption and overweight/obesity has been raised then previously. Material and methods: In an analytical cross-sectional study, 106 students (50 males and 56 females) were selected randomly from two largest schools in Dhaka, center of Bangladesh, studying in primary, secondary, or middle school programs in 2020 between ages 5 and 15. Data collection was conducted by a prepared fast food questionnaire and anthropometric measures including height, weight, and Body Mass Index (BMI). T-test and multivariate logistic regression were used for statistical analysis. results: According to our results, overweight and obesity prevalence based on BMI in males was 24% (95% CI: 7.99, 8.44) and 34% (95% CI: 8.22, 9.65) respectively while in females was 12.5% (95% CI: 8.07, 9.06) and 14.3% (95% CI: 8.04, 9.7) respectively. According to our results, 40.56% (44% in males vs 37.5% in females) had at least one type of fast food consumption in the recent week including noodles (31.8%), chips (37.1%), burger (15.9%), pizza (5.3%), sandwich (8.48%), rissole (19.08%), potato rissole (15.9%), fried chicken (10.6%), french fries (16.96), chickpea (11.66%), water balls (13.78%), mixed crispy (16.96%), cake (21.2%), pastry (10.6%), chocolate (12.72%), ice cream (15.9%), sweets (9.54%), and cold drinks (20.14%). Fast-food consumption for at least 3-4 days (OR: 10.66, 95% CI = 2.26– 50.24) and 5-6 days (OR: 2.89, 95% CI = 1.14–7.32) in a week was related to BMI cut-off points for all males and females (P<0.05) respectively. But fast-food sources were related to BMI cut-off points for all males (P<0.05) only. Conclusion: The prevalence of fast food consumption and obesity/overweight in Bangladeshi students is high and so healthy food and improved nutrition should be a high priority on every school agenda.