It has been noticed that, over the past twenty years, the rates of obesity in children have seen a gradual rise in many countries of the world, and has led researchers to term it as an ‘international epidemic of childhood obesity’. The childhood obesity facts that have come to light over ten years from 1985 to 1995 are, it is believed, showing that in Australia, the number of obese children has more than doubled, and at the same time, there has been a tripling of obesity in all age groups of children of either sex.

An Alarming Proportion Of Children Are Obese

As more and more childhood obesity facts come to light, an alarming picture is being drawn in which, it is believed, that in 1995, the proportion of obese children was twenty-one percent in the case of boys and twenty-three percent in the case girls. There has also been dramatic increase in the case of teenagers, and this rate of childhood obesity in Australian kids seems to be accelerating sharply.

The case of childhood obesity in the US is no less alarming, and according to childhood obesity facts for this country, there has been more than a doubling of obesity in preschool children as well as in adolescents aged between twelve and nineteen years of age. In the case of children aged between six and eleven years, this figure has tripled and it is believed that, at present, there are as many as nine million children aged six or above that are obese.

With more childhood obesity facts coming to light, it seems that the trend of childhood obesity is increasing and they are the same in the international sphere as well. Obesity continues to affect children throughout the world irrespective of whether it is a developing country, developed or under-developed country. Other childhood obesity facts show that along with the increase in obesity prevalence, the heavy groups are becoming heavier while the lean groups of children are staying lean. This shows that there has been little change in childhood obesity over time.

Other childhood obesity facts show that almost sixty percent of obese children aged between five and ten years have a minimum of one cardiovascular disease risk factor, and twenty-five percent had two or more risk cardiovascular disease risk factors. Also, childhood obesity facts point us in the direction that, for children born in the US in 2000, the lifetime risk of being diagnosed with type II diabetes is around thirty percent for boys and forty percent for girls, and this figure rises in the case of ethnic minority groups. Not a very rosy picture!