More Than 1 in 7 Kindergartners Are Obese, Study Finds
A growing number of American children are putting on excess weight at very young ages, a new study has found.In 1998, 72.9 percent of kids entered kindergarten at a healthy weight, based on their body mass index (BMI), while 15.1 percent were overweight and 12 percent were obese.More than a decade later, the proportion of kids who were overweight when they entered kindergarten was essentially unchanged. But the proportion of obese kindergartners climbed to 15.3 percent, and the proportion of kids with a healthy BMI declined to 69 percent, according to the study results, published July 5 in Pediatrics.“These worrying data indicate that the childhood obesity epidemic in the United States continues to grow and get more serious,” said the senior study author, K.M. Venkat Narayan, MD, of Emory University…