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Copyright 1995 The New York Times Company
The New York Times

October 8, 1995, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

SECTION: Section 1; Page 34; Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 479 words

HEADLINE: Study Finds a Soaring Rate Of Obesity in U.S. Children

BYLINE: AP

DATELINE: CHICAGO, Oct. 7

BODY:
The proportion of American children who are overweight has more than doubled in the last three decades, with most of the increase having occurred in recent years, new Federal statistics show.

"It's consistent with what we see in adults -- it's a big pattern," said Richard P. Troiano, an epidemiologist whose research team developed the statistics in a study that covered the years 1963 to 1991.

The reason for that pattern, the researchers said, is probably a combination of an increase in calorie intake and a decrease in exercise.

Mr. Troiano works for the National Center for Health Statistics in Hyattsville, Md., one of the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He and his associates reported their findings in the October issue of the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, published by the American Medical Association.

In all, they found, about 4.7 million American children from age 6 to 17 were overweight in the last years of the study, 1988-91. That was 10.9 percent of all American children in that age group, up from 5 percent in 1963-65.

"And most of that increase is in about the last 10 to 12 years," Mr. Troiano said in a telephone interview.

Heavy children tend to become heavy adults, who are at increased risk of gallbladder disease, osteoarthritis, diabetes, heart disease, some cancers and early death.

But, Mr. Troiano said, overweight is harder to define in children than in adults, because no one is sure how much weight is healthy, and how much ominous, during various stages of children's growth.

The researchers defined overweight by applying to their 1963-65 statistics a cutoff point that was the 95th percentile of the body-mass index, a weight-to-height calculation. That means that of every 100 children of a given age, sex and height, the heaviest five in 1963-65 were considered too heavy.

For 1988-91, the researchers applied a body-mass-index number that corresponded to the 1963-65 cutoff. Instead of finding that only five of every 100 exceeded it, the researchers found that 11 of every 100 did.

An even greater proportion of children would have been found overweight if the term had been defined as it generally is in adults, at the 85th percentile, the researchers said.

In that case, 22 percent of children and adolescents would have been overweight in 1988-91, compared with 15 percent in 1963-65.

"Everyone has seen a kid who is pudgy and has a growth spurt and gets taller and is no longer a pudgy kid," Mr. Troiano said. "The 95th percentile is only looking at the most extreme cases, and they are the most likely to be at real risk."

But Mr. Troiano said it was usually a bad idea to put children on diets, because dieting can interfere with their normal growth.

"However," he said, "it's safe to recommend that you increase activity. That's safe for adults and children."