The body height and body weight of preschool children in Taipei City

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the body height and weight of preschool children, aged from 36 to 83 months old, in Taipei City. Parameters including height, weight, body mass index (BMI) and weight-for-length index (WLI) of the subjects were analyzed from two cross-sectional samples from February 1997 to May 2000. A total of 2, 102 children were recruited from kindergartens located in Taipei. We reported the mean ± SD, median, mode and percentile distributions of body height, body weight and BMI. The percentage of overweight and obese by WLI was compared to criteria using the 85th percentile and 95th percentile for BMI. The cut-off points for overweight using BMI over the 85th percentile for boys were 17.80, 18.00, 18.58, 18.71; and for girls 17.84, 17.91, 18.08, 17.86. The 95th percentile for obese boys were 19.13, 20.18, 20.88, 21.28; and for girls 18.78, 18.78, 20.46, 19.58. The sample prevalence for overweight children (1.2 > WLI ≥ 1.1) was 16.08% and for obesity (WLI ≥ 1.2) 5.14%. Compared to the National Nutrition Survey in 1986, preschool children increased in height by 1.0-4.3% and weight by 13-21% in this analysis.