A recent study found that childhood obesity is becoming more common in the United States despite national school and community-based efforts to promote healthy behaviors at a young age.
The research, which was published in the journal Pediatrics on Tuesday, July 6, followed two nationally representative groups of kids from kindergarten to fifth grade, around ages 6 to 11. The first group of children was studied from 1998 to 2004, and the second group of kids was studied from 2010 to 2016.
The difference between the two children groups was striking. Around 16.2 percent of kids who did not have weight issues in 2010 when they entered kindergarten were obese by the end of fifth grade, compared with 15.5 percent of participants in the same body mass index (BMI) category who started kindergarten in 1998. Additionally, kids who studied in 2010 became obese at younger ages than their predecessors in the 1998 group.
Prevention of childhood obesity so important
Researchers found in both children groups that kids who were overweight during their preschool years had a significantly higher risk of obesity than their peers who were not, according to CNN.
Solveig Argeseanu Cunningham, who is the associate professor of global health and epidemiology at Emory University in Atlanta and first author of the study, said that once you get on that train towards elevated weight gain, it is really hard to turn it around, so prevention of overweight and obesity really early on are so important.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), obesity happens when a person has excessive fat accumulation that presents a health risk. Adults who have a BMI rating of over 30 are already considered obese. BMI is a calculation based on the height and weight of a person.
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Childhood obesity has negative consequences down the line
Childhood obesity is measured not by exact BMI, but by comparison to other kids of the same sex and age. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), those children who are in the 95th percentile of BMI for their age and sex are considered obese. The Mayo Clinic said that obesity is a major underlying risk factor for many illnesses such as cardiovascular disease, certain cancers, severe cases of Covid-19, and type 2 diabetes.
Dr. Jennifer Woo Baidal, who is the director of the Pediatric Obesity Initiative at Columbia University in New York City, said that without intervention, they will continue to see increasing prevalence and severity of obesity for kids at a younger age, which has really negative consequences down the line, not just for these children, but also for their future offspring.
Some doctors have already suspected that childhood obesity rates were increasing, especially among children of color. According to the study, children of color, particularly Hispanic and Black children, were at the greatest risk of developing childhood obesity. Socioeconomic status was not a strong predictor, though, of childhood obesity.
