Data from 2015-2016 show that nearly 1 in 5 school age children and young people (6 to 19 years) in the United States has obesity
Childhood obesity is a growing problem in the U.S., according to two new studies that suggest some recent reports of progress may have been incorrect, or that a downturn was fleeting at best.
Just four years ago, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that childhood obesity rates had leveled off and touted a dramatic 43 percent decline in obesity among kids ages 2 to 5 years during a 10-year period ending in 2012.
Now, however, it appears that childhood obesity has been steadily climbing for both boys and girls since 1999, researchers report in Pediatrics.
More recently, there has also been a sharp increase in severe obesity among kids 2 to 5 years old.
'Obesity is not going away, and all kids are still at risk,' said lead author Asheley Cockrell Skinner of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.
'This is not surprising, necessarily, but it is disheartening,' Skinner said by email.
'It tells us that our efforts to improve the health of children
