It’s easy to say an overweight or obese child is just going through a phase and will “grow out of it.” But new research shows “growing out of it” may not be the case for most children.
More than 57 percent of U.S. children are going to be obese at age 35, according to new research from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Lead study author Zachary Ward tells U.S. News that the result — while “sobering and a little bit shocking” — shouldn’t be surprising, considering the trends in weight gain over the last 40 years.
Approximately one in six children and adolescents in the U.S. is obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which was also one of the groups funding the study. More than one-third of adults are obese.
Ward, a programmer/analyst at the Harvard Chan School’s Center for Health Decision Science, says it’s been known for a long time that obesity or excess weight in childhood is predictive of obesity in adulthood. The surprising part? This was true for young children. Even among 2-year-olds with obesity, about three out of four of them will still have obesity at age 35.
For the study, published in the Nov. 30 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers combined height and weight data of 41,567 children and adults across five nationally representative studies. They were able to develop 1,000 virtual populations that had 1 million children up to 19 years old, and from there forecast their height and weight development.
The study also found that for children with severe obesity, at age 2 they only have a 1 in 5 chance of avoiding obesity at age 35. The likelihood dips to 1 in 10 by age 5. Also, children who aren’t obese still have a high risk of becoming obese adults. Study estimates suggest that more than half of children and adolescents ages 2 to 19 years old in 2016 will be obese when they are 35 years old, even though most aren’t currently obese.
Researchers also found that racial and ethnic disparities in obesity are present at age 2 and last into adulthood. They reported that, compared to white individuals at all ages from ages 2 to 35, non-Hispanic black and Hispanic individuals were more likely to have obesity.
Ward isn’t sure why there hasn’t been strong data on the subject of obesity, but points to competing agendas in the public health arena in addition to limited resources as possibilities. “The fact we had to simulate this data over decades, I think it’s interesting that [obesity is] such a large problem but that we haven’t really been measuring it very well historically,” he says.
This study is part of larger project called the Childhood Obesity Intervention Cost-Effectiveness Study, which has modeled over 40 different interventions in school-based, clinical and community sectors that have proven to be cost-effective. Ward says these models, however, need to be scaled and implemented widely if they’re going to turn the obesity epidemic around.
For example, part of this project included partnerships with West Virginia and Mississippi, where interventions last year included a tax exemption for healthy foods or changing some regulations around screen time in day care settings.
Ward says the focus now is putting together models nationally and trying to figure out how to package them across multiple sectors, and how they could sustain efforts throughout a child’s life to help curb the epidemic.
On a more granular level, Ward says concerned parents should talk to their child’s pediatrician, who can ask about family history, identify risk factors and come up with a plan.
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Study: More Than Half of US Kids Are Going to Be Obese At Age 35 originally appeared on usnews.com
