Number of Fat Youth Doubled, U.S. Study Says

The number of seriously overweight children and adolescents in the United States has more than doubled during the last three decades, with most of the increase occurring since 1980, according to the latest government figures.

Results of the third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, released Monday by the National Center for Health Statistics, show that 4.7 million youths ages 6 to 17 are severely overweight. That is 11% of children in that age group, more than twice the 5% rate observed in the 1960s.

“No matter how we define it, we see the same pattern in children that we’ve seen in adults over the same time period,” said Richard Troiano, an NCHS epidemiologist and lead author of a study on the findings that will appear in this month’s Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

Experts believe that American children are probably ballooning for the same reasons that their parents are. Studies by Tufts University researcher William Dietz and others suggest that physical inactivity--largely because of television, video games and personal computers--conspires with too much munching of high-calorie foods to add unwanted pounds.

The latest findings, presented at a science writers’ meeting sponsored by the American Medical Assn. in Miami Beach, suggest that excess weight is a problem facing all American children, regardless of sex, race or ethnic background.

“I’m not surprised by the increase, but I’m surprised by the degree of the increase,” said William J. Klish, chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Nutrition. “It’s a very significant jump.”

The study, which examined a national sample of nearly 3,000 children and adolescents from 1988 to 1991, found some of the steepest increases among African American girls.