Childhood obesity trends -- not time to celebrate, yet

Despite reports in the media that the obesity rate among young children has declined dramatically during the past 10 years, that is not the conclusion reached by recent studies published in the medical literature. Those studies did, however, reveal some potentially encouraging findings, which are detailed in the Editorial "Childhood Obesity Trends: Time for Champagne?" published in Childhood Obesity, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Childhood Obesity website at http://www.liebertpub.com/chi.

"The 'good' news is that 'only' about 1 in 10 children in the U.S. less than 5 years of age is obese," says Editor-in-Chief David L. Katz, MD, MPH, Director, Yale University Prevention Research Center. "That such a statistic is cause for celebration says more about how bad we let things get than how good they now are. Of further concern is that an even larger cohort of obese 5-year-olds from several years back is just now entering the age of risk for serious metabolic complications."

Provided by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc