Study Bolsters Evidence that Severe Obesity Increasing in Young US Kids

The following is excerpted from an online article posted by MedicalXpress.

A new study adds to evidence that severe obesity is becoming more common in young U.S. children.

There was some hope that children in a government food program might be bucking a trend in obesity rates—earlier research found rates were dropping a little about a decade ago for those kids. But an update released in the journal Pediatrics shows the rate bounced back up a bit by 2020.

The increase echoes other national data, which suggests around 2.5% of all preschool-aged children were severely obese during the same period.

“We were doing well and now we see this upward trend,” said one of the study’s authors, Heidi Blanck of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “We are dismayed at seeing these findings.”

The study looked at children ages 2 to 4 enrolled in the Women, Infants and Children program, which provides healthy foods and other services to preschool-aged children in low-income families. The children were weighed and measured.

The researchers found that 2.1% of kids in the program were severely obese in 2010. Six years later, the rate had dipped to 1.8%. But by 2020, it was 2%. That translates to about 33,000 of more than 1.6 million kids in the WIC program.

What’s happened since 2020 is not yet known. Some small studies have suggested a marked increase in childhood obesity—especially during the pandemic, when kids were kept home from schools, eating and bedtime routines were disrupted and physical activity decreased.

“We are thinking it’s going to get worse,” Hoelscher said.

Source: MedicalXpress
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-12-bolsters-evidence-severe-obesity-young.html