When did childhood obesity become a problem?
For scientists, the alarm rang in the 1980s and 1990s. Prior to that, experts found comfort in his 1960s data. This indicates that only 5% of children and adolescents were obese. It didn’t seem like an immediate problem.
But National data The 1980s showed that the percentage had doubled. It tripled by 2000 and quadrupled in 2018. When the epidemic started, expert opinions about why it happened were widely circulated, often citing favorite villains like Big Food, lack of exercise, and lack of fresh fruits and vegetables. However, rigorous evidence was scarce and a solution was inevitable.
Hasn’t anyone tried an intervention study?
Yes, but the results were disappointing.For example, in the 1990s, the National Institutes of Health sponsored Two large and rigorous studiesBy intervening in schools by expanding physical education, providing more nutritious cafeteria meals, teaching students about the need for proper eating habits and exercise, and involving parents, researchers are helping to improve children’s health. I asked if it could prevent weight gain.
One study, an eight-year, $20 million project sponsored by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, followed 1,704 third graders at 41 elementary schools in the Southwest. Most of the students were Native Americans, a group at high risk for obesity.
The school was divided into two groups. Some schools intervened intensively, others left it alone. Researchers determined from her fifth grade whether children in intervention schools weighed less than children in other schools.
Sadly, the students were deeply versed in the importance of activity and proper nutrition, but this was not the case. % to 27%.
“Changing weight wasn’t enough,” said Benjamin Caballero of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the study’s principal investigator.
