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Overweight and Obesity in Saudi Arabia
schools in Riyadh skip daily breakfast, with children in private schools consuming breakfast more frequently than those attending public schools (Al-Hazzaa et al. 2020). Overweight and obesity were found to be significantly and inversely associated with frequency of breakfast (OR = 1.44 with 95 percent CI at 1.20–1.71) among Saudi adolescents ages 14–19 years (Al-Hazzaa et al. 2012). A study of Saudi female students showed that greater energy intake in the morning and mid-morning was correlated with a lower risk of overweight and obesity, while greater energy intake in the evening was associated with a higher risk of overweight and obesity (Alamri 2019).
PHYSICAL INACTIVITY AS A RISK FACTOR IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF OVERWEIGHT AND OBESITY Regular physical activity helps in the prevention of hypertension, overweight, and obesity; it can also improve mental health, quality of life, and well-being. Additionally, it helps to prevent and treat NCDs such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and breast and colon cancer (WHO 2018). All forms of physical activity can provide health benefits if undertaken regularly and with sufficient duration and intensity. In 2013, the World Health Assembly endorsed the Global Action Plan on the Prevention and Control of NCDs and agreed on a set of nine global voluntary targets, which include a 10 percent relative reduction in the prevalence of insufficient physical activity by 2025 (WHO 2013). One of the Vision 2030 goals is to increase the percentage of individuals who practice sports at least once a week from 13 percent to 40 percent. To track progress toward that goal, data on physical activity levels in Saudi Arabia have been collected by the General Authority for Statistics through the Household Sport Practice Surveys (GASTAT 2017, 2018). The most recent data on time spent on physical activity during a typical week, and the intensity of the activity, come from the 2019 World Health Survey (MOH 2020). Additional data on sedentary habits (time spent on watching television and time spent sitting daily) are available from the 2013 Saudi Health Interview Survey (MOH and IHME n.d.). All the surveys used the same threshold of 150 metabolic equivalent minutes per week to classify physical activity level as sufficient or insufficient.
Physical activity among adults More than 80 percent of the Saudi Arabian population ages 15 years and older do not engage regularly in sufficient physical activity. Findings from recent surveys indicate that the prevalence of insufficient physical activity among adults declined from 85.1 percent (GASTAT 2017) to 80.3 percent (MOH 2020) between 2017 and 2019. The 2019 World Health Survey found that 19.7 percent of Saudi Arabia’s population (18.4 percent of women and 20.8 percent of men) had sufficient levels of physical activity per week. The level of physical activity was highest among the 15–29 age group (21.1 percent) and was decreasing with age. Populations living in urban areas reported slightly higher levels of physical activities than those from rural areas. Men in Saudi Arabia are more physically active than women (figure 3.2). More than a half of those engaged in a sufficient level of physical activity practice walking. Additionally, the 2018 Household Sport Practice Survey found that one-quarter of the population ages 15 years and older played football, while
