City kids, like their country cousins, are struggling with weight problems, U.S. researchers reported Monday.
More than 40 percent of New York City public-school students are overweight, and nearly one-quarter are obese, meaning their health is significantly threatened, New York City health department researchers found in a study published as part of a series in the American Journal of Public Health.
The findings on the New York students were similar to those of a highly publicized study release in June of children in highly rural Arkansas.
But simple changes could make a big difference, including adding physical-education classes in kindergarten and first grade, and teaching parents to offer their children water instead of juice or soda to drink, according to other studies published on Monday in the public-health journal’s series.
24 percent of kids obese
Lorna Thorpe and colleagues at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene studied more than 2,600 public elementary-school students. They found 43 percent of the students were overweight and 24 percent were obese, or more than 20 percent above a healthy weight for their height.
Hispanic children had the highest rates of obesity and children of Asian origin the lowest, they found.
Federal statistics show that 15 percent of all U.S. children and teens aged 6 to 19 were overweight in 2000. A study published in June found that 40 percent of Arkansas children were overweight, suggesting the problem has grown.
But simple programs can help kids turn this around.
Ashlesha Datar and Roland Sturm of the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, Calif., found that a little extra playtime could reduce obesity rates, especially in girls.
Their two-year study of 9,751 kindergartners found that adding an hour of physical activity per day helped some overweight girls slim down, although not boys. There was no effect on normal-weight children.
Physical education classes are key
“Despite the uneven reputation of currently existing physical education programs in U.S. schools, we found evidence that existing physical education can play a substantial role in containing obesity among overweight or at-risk-of-overweight girls,” they wrote.
The RAND study found that 16 percent of the kindergartners, aged 5 and 6, were given daily physical education classes.
Elizabeth McGarvey of the University of Virginia School of Medicine and colleagues studied a program aimed at low-income parents that stressed physical activity, watching what their kids ate, limiting television, substituting water for sweet drinks and eating five fruits or vegetables daily.
The researchers singled out 135 2- and 4-year-old children and their parents, and they found the program successfully influenced the parents to offer more water to drink and to play actively with their children.
Weight standards for children are calculated differently than for adults. A child is considered overweight if he or she has a body mass index, a calculation of weight to height, that is in the 95th percentile or higher for the child’s age.
A five-year-old boy who is 3 feet 8 inches tall is healthy at 42 pounds , at risk for being overweight at 48 pounds and overweight at 53 pounds. A 5-year-old girl who is 4 feet tall should weigh 50 pounds and is overweight at 65 pounds.