It seems like the battle against excessive weight has won ground
lately, as rates of childhood obesity in the U.S. appear to have leveled off
after a 25-year increase, results of a new federal survey show.
“After 25 years of extraordinarily bad news about childhood
obesity, this study provides a glimmer of hope,” Dr. David Ludwig, director of
the childhood obesity program at Children’s Hospital in Boston said, as quoted by the New York Times.
Researchers led by Cynthia Ogden of the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention examined height and weight measurements for 8,165 people
ages 2 to 19 taken in government surveys from 2003 through 2006, allowing them
to calculate body mass index, or BMI, a measure of obesity.
The results showed that obesity rates remained essentially
unchanged from 1999 to 2006. More exactly, the survey found that 32 percent were
considered at risk for obesity, 16 percent were obese, and 11 percent were
extremely obese. The rates were basically the same as those in 2003-2004.
“It looks like it’s leveling off. It could finally be
stabilizing,” Ogden
said, but it’s too soon to conclude that obesity rates will decrease in the
near future, she added. Only data from 2007-2008 will show whether we should be
optimistic about it, and those data won’t be available until the end of next
year or early 2010. “There’s some reason to be cautiously optimistic.”
The childhood obesity epidemic has become a national problem
for years. The worst part is that significant changes in the U.S. diet
dating back decades, including fatty and sugary fast foods, snacks, processed
foods and beverages and fewer fresh fruits and vegetables, do not seem to help
very much. Also, it’s no longer a secret that most children would rather play
video games and watch TV rather than do outside activities. The CDC recommends
moderate activities such as walking or riding a bike for at least one hour per
day.
Childhood obesity has become a major reason of concern, as
most of the obese children are more likely to develop obesity-related diseases.
According to the American Diabetes Association, about 176,500 children and
adolescents younger than 20 have diabetes, and 2 million teenagers have blood
glucose levels higher than normal, a condition called pre-diabetes.
Moreover, a study led by researchers at the University of
North Carolina and published last month in the journal Dynamic Medicine showed children
having a sedentary lifestyle are up to six times likelier to be at serious risk
of heart disease later in life than active peers. It is no longer a secret that
leading a sedentary life is linked to obesity.
“Children today live a very sedentary life and are prone to
obesity. This is the first study to examine the importance of childhood fitness
levels on your metabolism as a teenager. Previously we didn’t know low fitness
levels were an influence. It’s obvious now that there is a link and this is
something which we need to pay attention to by encouraging our kids to keep
fit, or suffer the consequences later in life,” lead author of the study
Robert McMurray said at the time.
McMurray found that almost half of the teenagers
participating in his study had developed at least one characteristic of
metabolic syndrome (a group of symptoms including obesity, abnormal fat levels
in the blood, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and insulin problems).
Metabolic syndrome can further lead to heart disease, diabetes and increased
risk of stroke.
There should be more public health campaigns to combat
childhood obesity, Ludwig said. Also national efforts are needed to reduce the
number of overweight and obese kids, including regulating junk food advertisements
to children and providing more money, including insurance reimbursement, for
obesity prevention and treatment program.
Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public
Health’s Center for Human Nutrition have already warned that 75 percent of adults,
and nearly 24 percent of U.S.
children and adolescents will be overweight or obese by 2015 if nothing is done
to curb obesity.
