Abstract Background The long incubation periods of cardiovascular diseases offer opportunities for controlling risk factors. In addition, preventive interventions in childhood are more likely to succeed because lifestyle habits become ingrained as they are repeated. Objective To investigate the effects of recreational physical activities, in combination or not with a qualitative nutritional counseling, in cardiometabolic risk factors of students with dyslipidemia and abdominal obesity. Methods Students (8-14 years old) were randomly divided into three groups (n=23 each): i ) Control; ii ) PANC, students undergoing Physical Activity and Nutritional Counseling, and iii ) PA, students submitted to Physical Activity, only. Blood samples (12-h fasting) were collected for biochemical analysis and anthropometric markers were also assessed. Two-Way RM-ANOVA and Holm-Sidak’s test, and Friedman ANOVA on Ranks and Dunn’s test were applied. P ≤ 0.05 was considered significant. Effect sizes were evaluated by Hedges’ g and Cliff’s δ for normal and non-Gaussian data, respectively. Results Compared to the control group and to baseline values, both interventions caused significant average reductions in total cholesterol (11%; p <0.001), LDL-c (19%; p=0.002), and non-HDL-c (19%; p=0.003). Furthermore, students in the PANC group also experienced a significant decrease in body fat compared to baseline (p=0.005) and to control (5.2%; g=0.541). Conclusions The proposed strategies were effective to reduce cardiometabolic risk factors in children and adolescents. The low cost of these interventions allows the implementation of health care programs in schools to improve the students’ quality of life.

ABSTRACT The cultural importance of medicinal plants has been measured in terms of popularity (number of people who know a plant) and versatility (number of therapeutic indications mentioned for a plant). Previous works have provided evidence about some drivers of medicinal plant importance, such as attributes of availability, efficiency, palatability and taste. The present study tested whether local perception of efficiency, availability (ease of acquisition), palatability (degree of pleasantness), and taste influence the popularity and versatility of medicinal plants in two rural communities of Buíque, Brazil. Free-listing was applied to identify the medicinal plants known/utilized in the communities, while semi-structured interviews were performed to collect more information about the plants. Informants participated in exercises to score the plant-parts that they knew and used. Statistical analysis was performed through multiple linear regressions, with none of the models retaining all variables as explanatory for popularity and versatility. However, availability and efficiency jointly explained versatility in one of the communities, while palatability was inversely related to versatility and popularity in the other. This study demonstrated that the studied individuals select plants differently, which makes exposing the driving forces of such differences a challenge.