OBJECTIVE: To describe and compare longitudinal studies on how daycare centers influence preschoolers' nutritional status. DATA SOURCE: Systematic review of scientific papers published from January 1990 to December 2008. Studies were retrieved from the following databases: Lilacs, Scielo and PubMed. Manual search of papers was carried out as well. The review occurred between March 2008 and June 2009, and the searched terms were: "child day care center", "nutritional status", "anthropometry", "food consumption", "anemia" and "food program". DATA SYNTHESIS: In the first stage 78 papers were obtained, but only seven of them could be used. The other 71 did not have data to contribute with the specific goal of this study. Among the papers gathered in the literature, very few of them allowed any inference about the influence of daycare centers on preschoolers' nutritional status. Nevertheless, some longitudinal studies showed a causal association between children's attendance to daycare centers and improvement of their nutritional status. CONCLUSIONS: There is a positive relation between children's attendance to day care centers and improvement of their nutritional status.
nutritional status; preschool; child; anthropometry; food consumption
