Many 3-year-olds found to be overweight, obese

Experts recommend breast-feeding for at least the first six months.
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
CHICAGO -- More than a third of disadvantaged 3-year-olds in Chicago and other major U.S. cities are overweight or obese, according to a new study that supports the notion that the struggle with obesity often begins in early childhood.
Hispanic children were most at risk, with 45 percent either overweight or obese, compared with 32 percent for white and black children.
The study's authors at the University of Wisconsin-Madison also identified several practices that may protect kids from excessive weight gain, including breast-feeding for at least six months and not allowing children to take a bottle to bed.
"What we know really tells us that this age is a critical period," said Dr. Jonathan Necheles, a pediatrician with the obesity prevention program at Children's Memorial Hospital who was not involved with the study.
"The older these kids get, the harder it gets" to change their eating habits, he said.
Although some nutrition experts hailed the results as a call to action, even using the terminology of obesity to describe the very young is contentious.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does not refer to children under age 20 as obese, since rapid growth early in life makes it difficult to compare desirable weights for children and adults. Instead, the CDC uses the terms "overweight" or "at risk of overweight" for children at the upper end of their peer group's body-mass index, or BMI, a number used to gauge the relationship of weight to height.
Another view
In contrast, the American Obesity Association holds that the same terminology should be used for children and adults, in part because heavy children are more likely to become obese adults and face a range of health problems such as diabetes and high blood pressure.
Despite such differences, both organizations agree that more children are becoming overweight, creating a national health threat. The percentage of U.S. children in the 95th percentile for BMI -- the definition of obese -- has more than doubled over the last two decades, to nearly 19 percent in 2004.
The new study, published online Thursday in the American Journal of Public Health, came up with even higher numbers for its target group of low-income children randomly selected from 20 major cities, including Chicago. In all, 35 percent of the 3-year-olds were either overweight or obese -- a striking figure, several experts said.
"These numbers are more dramatic than people might have expected," said Dr. Dennis Bier, director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Children's Nutrition Research Center at Baylor College of Medicine. "It quantifies what general belief and other data have suggested -- that obesity starts very early in life."