[Intervention for the promotion on the consumption of milk and dairy products as a strategy to reduce overweight in adolescents of México].

Introduction

the consumption of milk and dairy products can play an important role in the maintenance of healthy body weight, since, under normal conditions of individuals, a negative association has been observed between daily intake of calcium contained in milk and dairy products and adiposity markers.

Objective

to determine if the consumption of milk and dairy products affects the body weight reduction of adolescents in high school in Mexico City.

Methods

community trial with 2,368 adolescents in three phases: description of the initial nutritional status, multidisciplinary educational intervention in the intervention group and evaluation of the changes observed. A food frequency and reminder questionnaire of 24 hours was applied to the participants, anthropometric measures were taken and the Who Anthro Plus® program was used to obtain the nutritional diagnosis.

Results

it was found, in the intervention group, that adolescents who never consume whole milk, skimmed milk, fresh cow's cheese and natural yogurt have a higher prevalence of obesity (15.8%, 12.5%, 19.0% and 19.0%, respectively), compared to the adolescents who consume them daily (0.0%, 0.0%, 2.3% and 5.6%, respectively), there being a highly significant difference for the consumption of cheese fresh cow's milk and natural yogurt (p ≤ 0.01). It was possible to increase the frequency of dairy consumption and changes in nutritional status were observed in the intervention group, where the prevalence of obesity decreased from 13.8% to 6.1%.

Conclusions

adolescents with higher milk consumption and its dairy products had a lower prevalence of obesity.