The ENERGY project stands for the "EuropeaN Energy balance Research to prevent excessive weight Gain
among Youth : Theory and evidence-based development and validation of an intervention scheme to promote healthy nutrition and physical activity".
ENERGY consists of a series of systematic
reviews, secondary data analyses, a school-based and family involved cross sectional and intervention study among 7000 and 2500 children and one of their parents respectively. Seven countries across Europe are involved. The
project description and study design papers regarding the
cross sectional study in general and
the accelerometer study (i.e. a study to monitor schoolchildren physical activity objectively) have been published, and a number of scientific papers have been submitted for publications. These concern papers on prevalence - and differences in prevalence between the seven countries - of overweight and obesity, as well as engagement in a range of behaviors (i.e. physical activity, sedentary behaviors, dietary behaviors) associated with risk for being or becoming overweight; differences in prevalence according to ethnic background of the children. Further papers that have been submitted focus on, for example, the reliability and validity of the measures used in the ENERGY study, the relation between weather circumstances and physical activity, the association between sedentary behavior and blood markers for metabolic health, et cetera.
These days another writing workshop is ongoing in a bed-and-breakfast facility in Amsterdam to write and prepare the next series of scientific papers from the project. Scientists from the UK, Norway, Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands meet here for 3 days to write and provide feedback on a series of papers regarding for example mediators of socio-economic differences in childhood overweight, the clustering of physical activity and sedentary behavior patterns, the contribution of TV watsching to total sedentary behavior and a range of other topics. All these papers use data from the cross sectional survey of ENERGY. Data for the ENERGY intervention study targetting sedentray behavior among school children in five of the partcipating countries are now being collected and will be available later this year.
