Forbes' Alice Walton discusses a new study in the New England Journal of Medicine related to childhood obesity. The study tracked the weights of 7800 kindergarteners through eighth grade, and found that overweight five year-olds were "four times as likely as normal-weight children to become obese."
[Childhood obesity] was more likely to have occurred at younger ages, primarily among children who had entered kingergarten overweight.
The results of the NEJM study show the importance of addressing childhood obesity before school years, earlier than previously thought.
The study did share some good news: obesity rates declined among fifth to eighth graders. This information is reflected in the latest CDC figures which show a drop in childhood obesity from 2003 - 2010 among low-income preschool children.
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