Low-Income Preschoolers Prone to Obesity

And Latino children face greater risk than blacks or whites, study finds

By Randy Dotinga
HealthDay Reporter

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THURSDAY, Dec. 28 (HealthDay News) -- The U.S. obesity epidemic begins with kids barely out of diapers -- at least in poor, urban families, a new study suggests.

A review of nearly 2,000 3-year-old, low-income children and their mothers found that one-third of white and black children were overweight or obese, while a stunning 44 percent of Latino children fell into those categories.

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"The message is that we're seeing overweight and obesity at younger ages than we thought possible," said study author Rachel Tolbert Kimbro, a health and society scholar at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. "It's a particular problem in lower-income communities, and it's something we need to keep an eye on and prevent as much as possible."

According to Kimbro, there's been little research into weight problems among very young children. But, studies have shown high rates of obesity among older children and teenagers.

In the new study, the researchers examined surveys of parents who had children from 1998 to 2000 in 20 large U.S. cities. The parents lived in urban areas and were poor.

The researchers focused on 1,976 children whose height and weight were measured at 3 years of age. After adjusting the statistics to discount the influence of factors such as the age and education level of parents -- which have been shown to affect obesity in children -- the researchers found that 32 percent of the white and black children were overweight or obese, as were 44 percent of the Latino children.

The study findings are published in the Dec. 28 online edition of the American Journal of Public Health.

Why the difference between the groups of children? While the answer isn't clear, the researchers said they did uncover a few clues. For one thing, children who took bottles to bed were nearly twice as likely to be overweight or obese, and Latino kids were more likely to do that than black or white kids. The excess calories in the bottles could contribute to obesity, Kimbro surmised.

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