Successful intervention models for obesity prevention: the role of healthy life styles

Children obesity is considered a serious public health problem around the world. In Spain, the prevalence of overweight/obesity is reaching alarming figures, exceeding 35% of the children. Several hypotheses suggest that the energy balance model does not fit very well when analyzing the causes of the current obesity epidemic and, although genetics seems to explain up to 30% of the likelihood to become obese in infancy, has been suggested that genetics might be influenced by environment factors including vigorous physical activity (PA). Some recent systematic reviews indicate that there is enough evidence about the effectiveness of interventions to prevent obesity in children 6-12 years old; however, the heterogeneity of the effect, and the potential selection, information and publication biases that undermine the validity of these studies, thus their results should be interpreted with caution. In Spain, an extracurricular PA program of leisuretime (MOVI) has evidenced some effectiveness on reducing the adiposity and on improving the lipid profile in schoolchildren. To overcome some weakness of MOVI program, a second edition of this study was designed. The objectives of this review are twofold: 1) to analyze latest data of the obesity epidemic in Spain; and 2) to describe the main features of MOVI-2 program, and overall of the successful interventions to prevent children obesity.