Children's Obesity
Rates May Be Worse Than Thought
Friday
April 18, 2003
By Charnicia E. Huggins NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The
prevalence of obesity may be even higher than the 10 percent previously reported
among children in the U.S., according to a team of Alabama and Texas
researchers.
They found that 15.5 percent of nearly 2,000 black, white and Hispanic boys and
girls enrolled in Head Start programs in Alabama and Texas were overweight. In a second group of 1,585 third-grade
students enrolled in a school-based fruit and vegetable promotion program in
Alabama, nearly 25 percent were found to be overweight -- a rate nearly double
that previously reported among Alabama youth, report Michelle Feese of the
University of Alabama at Birmingham and her colleagues. The higher number of overweight kids in
the Head Start study was similar among boys and girls of all races studied --
black, white and Hispanic. And among the third-graders, just as many children
from high-income families as from low-income ones were overweight. The findings are published in a research
letter in a recent issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Although previous studies have found
that obesity and other health conditions are more prevalent among high-risk
groups with lower incomes and those who live in the South, the obesity rates
found in this study are even greater than one would expect, given these factors,
Feese said. She told Reuters Health that childhood
obesity at such a higher rate than is normally seen in these groups suggests
that the nation's obesity epidemic could be "even worse" than
previously thought. SOURCE: Journal of the American Medical
Association 2003;289:1780-1781. |