Future Strategies in Pediatric Obesity Prevention

If the future generations are being programmed in an early and definite manner towards obesity, the real primary prevention would be to reduce the presence of the determining factors in the mother population. In Italy, an important questions is what is the current situation as regards to BMI, eating habits and smoking habits of the future mothers. In this survey, information was collected from 8,735 university students of 18-30 years of age, through the distribution of questionnaires in seven different regions of Italy. The data deriving from the population of 5,827 female students was analyzed through the EPI-info program. 34.0% of the women had a BMI that was not within the normal range. 7.0% was pre-obese and 1.1% was obese. 25.8% of the women was mildly (19.2%), moderately (6.4%) or severely (0.2%) thin. 50.0% of the women do not eat at least one portion of vegetables/day and only 27.9% of the women eat more than one portion of vegetables/day. 36.3% of the women declared that they currently smoke. It would be necessary to promote nutritional education and anti-smoking campaigns in the preconception period to increase the number of women who reach pregnancy with correct BMI and lifestyles.