{"id":491914,"date":"2026-02-26T16:17:30","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T16:17:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/491914\/"},"modified":"2026-02-26T16:17:30","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T16:17:30","slug":"child-obesity-hits-record-high-as-adult-rates-level-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/491914\/","title":{"rendered":"Child Obesity Hits Record High, as Adult Rates Level Off"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n American adults may finally be hitting a plateau on obesity. Kids, however, are not. Two new CDC reports based on decades of federal health survey data find, among other things, that 40.3% of US adults ages 20 and older were obese between August 2021 and August 2023, slightly below the record 42.4% seen in 2017-2018, reports ABC News<\/a>. Experts say the apparent leveling could reflect better public health efforts and the growing use of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy, though researchers warn it’s too early to know if the dip is real or just a sampling quirk. \n <\/p>\n


\n For children and teens, however, the picture is moving in one direction: up. The same period shows 21.1% of kids ages 2 to 19 were considered obese, compared to 5.2% in the early 1970s; severe obesity, meanwhile, has risen from 1% to 7% during that same stretch. Rates among preschoolers briefly fell about a decade ago but have since climbed to 14.9%. One specialist calls the shift “exceptionally concerning.” \n <\/p>\n


\n Doctors say reversing the trend will require aggressive use of lifestyle changes for younger kids and, for many adolescents, the wider use of medication and even bariatric surgery. “Obesity in childhood is common and serious, but modifiable,” says Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital’s William Heerman, co-author of other recent research<\/a> on child obesity, in a release<\/a>. “Families are not alone. Effective treatments, including behavioral programs, nutrition counseling, and when appropriate, medications, are available and increasingly supported by guidelines.” \n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" American adults may finally be hitting a plateau on obesity. Kids, however, are not. Two new CDC…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":491915,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[13897,23715,96695,21595,97,1623,986,225431,249,8230,93050],"class_list":["post-491914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-cdc","tag-centers-for-disease-control-and-prevention","tag-childhood-obesity","tag-discoveries","tag-health","tag-mounjaro","tag-obesity","tag-obesity-epidemic","tag-ozempic","tag-wegovy","tag-zepbound"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=491914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491914\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/491915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=491914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=491914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=491914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}