Effectiveness of Interventions to Promote Healthy Eating Habits in Children and Adolescents at Risk of Poverty: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

The objective of this review was to provide an up-to-date review of trials that include behavioral intervention on the eating habits of children and adolescents at risk of poverty, applying meta-analysis to estimate the size of the intervention effect. A systematic literature search was performed in the following databases: MEDLINE via Pubmed and via EBSCOhost, LILACS and IBECS via VHL. The MeSH terms were used: “social class”, “poverty”, “diet”, “health promotion” (PROSPERO ID: 183900). A total of 14 articles were finally included in this systematic review. The primary results of the included studies were meta-analyzed with the RevMan 5.3 program, assuming a random effects model. Analysis of the overall effect showed combined standardized mean differences (SMD) of 0.16 (CI 95%: [0.03, 0.30], I(2) = 76%). The p-value for the Z statistic was 0.02, which reflects accuracy in the effect estimation. When establishing subgroups based on the intervention tracking time points, studies that provided longer-term follow-up data showed a combined SMD of 0.15 (CI 95%: [−0.02, 0.32], I(2) = 81%]). Small effects of behavioral interventions were found to promote healthy eating habits, but better effects were shown in cases where the invention was followed up in the long term.