We are almost beginning to accept that obesity has now become a problem not just for adults but also for children. However, it is perhaps still difficult to accept that it has now reached the very young.
Obesity is now at epidemic levels in the US and, perhaps not surprisingly, is now commonly being seen in teenagers. It would seem however that this epidemic has now spread outside of the adult and adolescent population and we are starting to see obesity at young ages that many people are finding it difficult to believe.Although it is hard to believe, a recent study that looked at just under two thousand children reported a disturbingly large number of both overweight and obese children at just three years of age.The study examined a group of children who were born to low income families from 1998 and 2000 in some twenty US cities. Both the weight and height of the children were recorded at the age of three and the researchers noted that almost one-third of both white and black children were obese or overweight with this figure rising to forty-four percent in the case of Latino children.While across the board these figures are of great concern, the high incidence of obesity in Latino children is particularly worrying and is so far inexplicable. However, the researchers did note that there was a tendency for Latino children with overweight mothers to themselves be overweight and further found that it was more common practice for mothers of Latino children to give them a bottle at bedtime.These observations in themselves are thought to contribute to the higher incidence of obesity in Latino children, but they almost certainly do not give us the entire solution to the question of why Latino children showed a markedly higher obesity rate.On top of the stigma that has been attached to obesity and the inevitable pressure that these obese and overweight children are going to find themselves under, a number of medical conditions like high blood pressure and asthma are also beginning to be found at ever younger ages. Young children are also now being seen with various conditions like high cholesterol, type 2 diabetes and heart problems that were formerly thought to be only 'adult' conditions.
