Overweight and Obesity among Yazd University Students

Objective: Obesity is a major health problem. Overweight and obesity have been identified as one of the 10 leading health indicators. This study was designed to evaluate the Body Mass Index in Iranian university student sample. Materials and Methods: This was a cross-sectional study on 911 Iranian university students aged 18-25 years who were selected by simple random sampling. Weight, height and BMI were measured for all subjects. Body mass index was calculated as weight divided by the square of height. The measurements were compared between two genders. Subjects were classified according to their BMI into underweight, normal, overweight, obese, and extreme obese. Data was analyzed by SPSS (Ver. 19). Results: A total of 911 Iranian university students (475 males and 436 females), 18-25 years old entered the study. Most subjects (639 persons) had normal weight. Five percent were underweight, 20.9% overweight and 3.8% obese and only one subject suffered from morbid obesity. Conclusion: In this study the prevalence of abnormal weight in university students was lower than general population, and this prevalence was higher among males than females.