Obesity Rates Plateau in US Since 2000, CDC Report Finds
(Adds Harvard professor’s comment in the 14th paragraph.)
Jan. 17 (Bloomberg) -- The prevalence of obesity in the U.S. largely leveled off over the last decade, even as some individual groups, such as boys from ages 6 to 19, saw increases, according to government data.
Obesity rates in adults rose slightly to 35.7 percent from 30.5 percent between 1999 and 2010, compared with rates that nearly doubled in the two previous decades, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported today. The rate among boys climbed 29 percent, surpassing girls for the first time, according to the Atlanta-based health agency.
“There is really a slowing down of the rapid increase in the prevalence of obesity that we saw in the 1980s and 1990s,” said Cynthia Ogden, a CDC epidemiologist and the report’s lead author, by telephone. “Those increases we saw earlier are not continuing, and we may be seeing a plateau.”
More than 78 million U.S. adults, or a third of the population, and about 12.5 million children were obese in 2009- 2010, according to the studies reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The studies are part of a continuing CDC effort to track obesity rates with updated numbers every two years.
The researchers analyzed data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which weighs and measures participants, producing the most accurate details available, said Cynthia Ogden, a CDC epidemiologist, by telephone. The analysis found virtually no changes since 2007, Ogden said.
‘Rapid Increase Slowed’
Until recently, the focus toward solving obesity was on fad diets and possible designer drugs, according to Kelly Brownell, director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Those won’t work on a national scale because obesity is difficult to reverse once established, he said.
School Efforts To Reduce Obesity - News
New York City was able to reduce the obesity rate among grade school children 5.5 percent from 2006 to 2010 by boosting physical activity and encouraging healthier eating habits. The percentage of obese kids in kindergarten through eighth grade in New
Yet for all the strides we've made in public health, obesity is a problem that remains. Fifty percent of adults here are overweight or obese. And one in three Boston school-aged children are, too. I'm determined to make Boston a leader in obesity
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According to Van Hook, policies that aim to reduce childhood obesity and prevent unhealthy weight gain need to concentrate more on the home and family environments as well as the broader environments outside of school. "Schools only represent a small
The School Food Trust (SFT) has issued new voluntary nutrition guidelines for pre-school children aimed at reducing obesity in under-fives, following a report that found many were eating food more suitable for adults. Nurseries, child-minders and other
Study suggests junk food in schools doesn't cause weight gain ...
While the percentage of obese children in the United States tripled between the early 1970s and the late 2000s, a new study suggests that—at least for middle school students—weight gain has nothing to do with the candy, soda, chips, and other junk food they can purchase at school.
"We were really surprised by that result and, in fact, we held back from publishing our study for roughly two years because we kept looking for a connection that just wasn't there," said Jennifer Van Hook, a Professor of Sociology and Demography at Pennsylvania State University and lead author of the study, which appears in the January issue of Sociology of Education .
The study relies on data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-1999, which follows a nationally representative sample of students from the fall of kindergarten through the spring of eighth grade (the 1998-1999 through 2006-2007 schools years). Van Hook and her coauthor Claire E. Altman, a sociology and demography doctoral student at Pennsylvania State University, used a subsample of 19,450 children who attended school in the same county in both fifth and eighth grades (the 2003-2004 and the 2006-2007 school years).
The authors found that 59.2 percent of fifth graders and 86.3 percent of eighth graders in their study attended schools that sold junk food. But, while there was a significant increase in the percentage of students who attended schools that sold junk food between fifth and eighth grades, there was no rise in the percentage of students who were overweight or obese. In fact, despite the increased availability of junk food, the percentage of students who were overweight or obese actually decreased from fifth grade to eighth grade, from 39.1 percent to 35.4 percent.
"There has been a great deal of focus in the media on how schools make a lot of money from the sale of junk food to students, and on how schools have the ability to help reduce childhood obesity," Van Hook said. "In that light, we expected to find a definitive connection between the sale of junk food in middle schools and weight gain among children between fifth and eighth grades. But, our study suggests that—when it comes to weight issues—we need to be looking far beyond schools and, more specifically, junk food sales in schools, to make a difference.