Child obesity rates alarming, nearly identical to adults

The kids are as obese as the adults.

A national survey recently released on children’s health showed that 30 percent of Wisconsin children aged 10-17 are considered overweight. The rate for adults is 31 percent.

The numbers are alarming. As kids catch up with adults in obesity, they also catch up in other places.

“The scary part about child and adolscent obseity is that disease that we see in middle- or late-aged adults we’re now seeing in our kids,” Marisa Pruitt, a registered dietician at Gundersen Health System in La Crosse, said. “Things like hpyertention, fatty liver disease, Type-2 diabetes.”

To combat the problem, things need to start with the parents.

“We’ve had a pretty consistent increase in obesity for adults and children, are 100 percent influenced by the adults around them,” Pruitt said. “It’s great that we can layer messages in schools, communities and after school programs but if parents aren’t modeling these programs, we’re not going to see much of a change.”

The report does use height and weight measurements used to calculate body mass index, which is thought by many experts to be an archaic way to measure obesity.