Finally some good news in the weight-loss struggle: The rate of childhood obesity may be leveling off in the USA after years of skyrocketing growth, new government data show.
About 32% of children and teens ages 2 to 19 -- about 23 million -- were either overweight or obese in 2003-2006 compared with 29% in 1999. The increase is not considered statistically significant.
There also was no statistically significant increase in the percentage of children who are the heaviest. About 16% of kids ages 2 and older were obese in 2003-06, compared with 14% in 1999-2000. But the percentage is still far higher than the 5% to 7% of children who were obese in 1980.
"It looks like childhood obesity is leveling off after 20 years of growth," says lead researcher Cynthia Ogden, an epidemiologist with the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."We can be cautiously optimistic that things are beginning to stabilize, but these percentages are still higher than they should be."
Experts have known for years that hauling around extra pounds takes a huge toll on children's health. It puts them at an increased risk for type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, sleep apnea and other health problems.
"This is a glimmer of hope," says David Ludwig, director of the Optimal Weight for Life Program at Children's Hospital in Boston. "It's too soon to know if it's a temporary pause in an ongoing increase or whether we've really begun to turn the tide.
"No matter what, the current levels are unacceptably high. The health toll of childhood obesity will continue to mount unless there is a substantial decline in the number of obese children," he says. "It can take many years for an obese child to develop a weight-related complication like type 2 diabetes and many more years before that translates into a heart attack."
The latest statistics are based on measurements of 8,165 children and adolescents who were part of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey in 2003-06. The data are considered the gold standard for evaluating the obesity problem in the USA because it is an extensive survey of people whose weight and height are actually measured rather than being self-reported.
Many experts classify children as obese if they are in the 95th percentile on body mass index growth charts, which is weight-adjusted for height. This means their BMI is larger than 95% of the reference population, a group of children from the 1970s and '80s.
Children are considered overweight if they fall between the 85th to 95th percentile on BMI growth charts.
For the most recent survey, researchers found that many of the children who are above the 95th percentile are in fact at the highest end of the BMI charts, above the 97th percentile.
Although childhood obesity seems to be leveling off, age and racial disparities remain, Ogden says. Among the other findings in today's Journal of the American Medical Association:
*About 12% of children ages 2 to 5 are obese, compared with 17% of children 6 to 11 and 18% of kids 12 to 19.
*Of black adolescent girls ages 12 to 19, 28% are obese, compared with 20% of Mexican-American girls that age and 14.5% of white girls.
*Of Mexican-American boys ages 6 to 11, 27.5% are obese compared with 18.6% of blacks and 15.5% of whites.
Ludwig, author of an accompanying editorial in the journal, believes a comprehensive national strategy is needed to attack childhood obesity, including legislation to protect children "from junk-food advertising."
In the meantime, parents must keep highly processed foods out of the house, limit time spent at the TV and computer and set a good example with their own exercise and eating habits, he says.
To see more of USAToday.com, or to subscribe, go to http://www.usatoday.com
??? Copyright 2007 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.