Mike Stobbe – ASSOCIATED PRESS – in the D&C on 12-19-23
NEW YORK – 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 Monday 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.’