Introduction

Mexico ranks second in the world in childhood obesity. The impact of obesity on comprehensive health is evident; however, the evidence of its influence on academic performance in Mexican adolescents is still scarce. Objective: to compare the academic performance of high school students based on their Body Mass Index (BMI).

Material and Methods

Cross-sectional study in a probabilistic sample of 156 students. Weight and height were taken and BMI was classified according to the criteria of the World Health Organization (WHO). The average grade was used to measure academic performance. Descriptive statistics and Chi-square were applied to compare groups.

Results

50% women; the mean age was 13.1 years (DT=0.94). 32.7% were obese, 19.2% overweight and 48.1 % normal weight. The mean score was 8.6 (DT=0.82), 42.3% had a high performance, 38.5% an average performance and 19.2% a low performance. High performance was more frequent in the obesity group (40.9%), followed by normal weight (36.4%) and overweight (22.7%). When comparing the academic performance in the groups by BMI, statistical differences were found (p=0.01).

Conclusions

The prevalence of overweight and obesity is higher than the national average. There are differences in academic performance. Adolescents with obesity had a higher school performance.

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