ABSTRACT
The main causes of overweight and obesity are multifactorial and include genetic, biological and environmental factors, which impact on weight gain by acting through the mediators of energy intake, especially energy-dense food, and/or energy expenditure, especially daily physical activity. Despite the effect that genetic and biological factors can have, the rising prevalence among genetically stable population groups indicate that environmental factors must underlie the overweight and obesity epidemic (Krebs et al., 2007). Current evidence suggests that the development and execution of intervention programmes related to prevention and management of overweight and obesity require the identification of obesogenic behaviour determinants (Bonsergent et al., 2013). Studies available in the literature have shown the complex association between behaviour determinants and obesity (Ali et al., 2011), but these studies were conducted in highly industrialized regions and whether these findings apply to other less developed societies remains to be determined. Therefore, the aim of this study was to identify the behaviour determinants that are most strongly associated with overweight and obesity in a representative sample of Brazilian schoolchildren assisted by the Parana Healthy Program.
