Jun

5

Childhood obesity appears to hit plateau in US - International Herald Tribune- Topic: Childhood Obesity News

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Childhood obesity, which has been on the rise for more than two decades, appears to have hit a plateau in the United States, a potentially significant development in the battle against excessive weight gain among children. But the finding, based on survey data gathered from 1999 to 2006 by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and published in the Wednesday issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association, was greeted with guarded optimism. It was not clear whether the lull in childhood weight gain was permanent or even whether it was the result of public anti-obesity efforts to limit junk food and increase physical activity in schools. The data come from thousands of children who have taken part in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys - compiled by the National Center for Health Statistics at the CDC since the 1960s - and represent some of the most reliable statistics available on the health of American children. By comparison, about 5 percent of children and teenagers in the United States were obese in the 1960s and 1970s. Read Childhood Obesity

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