Abstract:

An important factor in health protection is body weight, which can lead to unwanted health status, especially in children and young people. Daily maintenance of healthy eating habits and improving the quality of life through regular physical activity can prevent long-term complications caused by excess body weight. The importance of encouraging children as well as the importance of the school's role in developing competences and raising awareness of the importance of health protection in children are immeasurable. There are various forms of measurement that can be used to assess the level of physical activity of an individual as well as to calculate the level of nutrition. The main goal of this work was to determine whether there is a connection between the level of nutrition and physical activity in students from the 1st to the 4th grade of elementary school. 165 students between the ages of 7 and 11 participated in the research, of which 50.3% were girls and 49.7% were boys, all from the area of Bjelovar-Bilogora County. To determine the level of nutrition, anthropometric measurements, measurements of body mass and height were carried out, when the body mass index (BMI) was calculated based on the ratio, according to which the respondents were classified into the appropriate level of nutrition. The Croatian version of the PAQ-C (Physical Activity Questionnaire for Children) questionnaire was used to determine the level of physical activity. Furthermore, the relationship between nutritional level and physical activity was calculated using the Kruskal-Wallis test. The Mann-Whitney U test and the Kruskal-Wallis test were used to determine differences in nutrition and physical activity, in relation to gender and age. Observing the nutrition of the respondents, no statistically significant difference was observed with regard to gender, but a statistically significant difference was observed with regard to age, with the value of the indicator being the highest for the 4th grade respondents. The results of this research show that the largest proportion of respondents belong to the category of normal nutrition (66.1%), while the least are obese (1.8%), which is in contrast to previous research. On the contrary, in the case of physical activity, there is a statistically significant difference with regard to the gender of the respondents, whereby the value of the indicator is higher for male respondents, but there is no statistically significant difference with regard to the age of the respondents. The Kruskal-Wallis test determined the relationship between the level of nutrition and physical activity, which shows that there is a statistically significant difference with regard to BMI, where the value of the indicator is higher for respondents who are in the category of malnutrition and normal body weight.

Keywords:

Nutrition, physical activity, students, elementary school.