Childhood obesity is a serious, growing epidemic, cutting across all categories of race, ethnicity, family income and locale. We spend $150 billion every year to treat obesity-related conditions, with childhood health care costs rapidly increasing that number.
Obesity rates tripled in the past 30 years, a trend that means, for the first time in our history, American children may face a shorter expected lifespan than their parents.
The Obesity Epidemic
Researchers have estimated that 16.9 percent of children and adolescents ages 2 to 9 are obese, and 31.7 percent are overweight. This translates to more than 12 million children and adolescents who are obese, and more than 23 million who are overweight.
Alarmingly, the obesity problem is starting at an even earlier age, with researchers estimating that 21.2 percent of children only ages 2 to 5 already obese or overweight, a percentage that has more than doubled during the past three decades. The obesity rate for children ages 6 to 11 has also more than quadrupled – from 4.2 to 19.6 percent – as well as tripled for adolescents ages 12 to 19 – from 4.6 to 18.1 percent – over the past four decades.
Some populations are more likely to be obese or live in unhealthy environments than others. Lower-income individuals, Blacks, Latinos, American Indians and those living in the southern part of the United States are among those affected more by obesity than their peers. Many of these communities have access to half as many supermarkets as the wealthiest areas. Communities with high levels of poverty are also significantly less likely to have places where children can be physically active, such as parks, green spaces, and bikes paths and lanes.
Impact on Future Generations
Obese and overweight children may suffer during childhood, adolescence, and adulthood with poor health, as well as face academic, social, and financial burdens.
In Childhood
Obese children are more likely to be unhealthy, unhappy, and absent from school than their healthy-weight peers. Children who weigh more are at increased risk for health problems, such as type 2 diabetes, a disease that was once considered an adult illness. In fact, researchers have estimated that one out of every three males and two out of every five females born in the United States in the year 2000 will be diagnosed with diabetes during their lives.
Obese and overweight youths are also more likely to have key risk factors for cardiovascular disease than their peers. A national study of 12- to 17-year olds found 42.9 percent of obese youths and 22.3 percent of overweight youths had unhealthy cholesterol or triglyceride levels, compared with only 14.2 percent of their normal-weight peers.
In Adulthood
Obese youths are more likely to become obese adults, suffer from poor health and die at an earlier age than their healthy-weight peers. Among 16- and 17-year-olds, 80 percent of obese males and 92 percent of obese females will become obese adults, while only 21 percent of peers who are neither obese nor overweight will become obese adults.
Experts warn that excess weight could reduce average life expectancy by five years or more over the next few decades, and researchers are predicting that, if current adolescent obesity rates continue, there will be more than 100,000 additional cases of coronary heart disease attributable to obesity by 2035.
Obese and overweight adults will also be more susceptible to type 2 diabetes, hypertension, osteoarthritis, stroke, certain kinds of cancer and many other debilitating diseases. The United States is projected to spend $344 billion in obesity-related health care costs in 2018 if obesity levels continue to increase at their current rate.