As the rates of childhood obesity skyrocketed, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued an expansion of the Body Mass Index (BMI) charts used for assessing growth.
Updated growth charts released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now extend to a body mass index of 60 — up from previous charts that stopped at a BMI of 37, with additional categories to track obesity in kids ages 2 to 19.In recent decades, severe obesity among children in America has nearly quadrupled, experts said.”We noticed a decade ago that we were kind of outstripping our growth charts,” said Dr. Tom Inge, who directs the weight loss surgery program at Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago.The CDC charts are the most widely used tool in the U.S. to track growth and development in kids.
Currently, about 4.5 million children (about 6 percent) are severely obese.
The old charts had been used since 2000, and were based on data from US surveys conducted from 1963 to 1994, when far fewer children were obese, let alone severely obese, said CDC epidemiologist Cynthia Ogden.Growth charts show patterns of development by age, expressed in BMI, a calculation of height and weight, and also in curves called percentiles.Unlike adults, children are not classified as obese or severely obese based on a strict BMI cutoff.Instead, kids are described as obese based on percentiles — where they fall compared to other kids their age.A child is considered obese if they reach the 95th percentile on the growth charts, and severely obese at 120 percent of that mark — or with a BMI of 35 or higher, according to the CDC.
Many people have questions for the CDC, especially as the lockdowns it recommended prevented children from getting outdoor activity and resulted in the use of more electronics that further contributed to this issue.
The dietary recommendations have relied too heavily on carbohydrates, and inspiring children and adults to eat insects as a source of protein is not a helpful resolution to this issue.
On a clear August morning in southeastern Pennsylvania, more than a dozen adults and children stood in a park pavilion, listening to mealworms sizzling in a hot pan. They were learning about entomophagy — the human consumption of insects — from Lisa Sanchez, a naturalist with the Lancaster County Department of Parks and Recreation, who has taught the practice for 25 years.Suddenly, one mealworm sputtered out of the pan. Six-year-old Adaline Welk — without prompting — popped it into her mouth. The crowd cheered for the newly minted entomophagist. “It’s not that bad!” she exclaimed. “It kind of tastes like kettle corn!”
Unfortunately, this trend has serious national security issues.
Nationwide, 11 percent of our 17- to 24-year-olds do not qualify for military service strictly due to excess weight. If you combine this with other eligibility factors such as crime or drug abuse or even academic issues, this shocking ineligibility figure has held steady at 71 percent for years.However, the Department of Defense’s most recent figures show that an astonishing 77 percent of Americans of prime recruiting age would be ineligible for military service. This is a massive increase. Over three-quarters of American young people are ineligible due to some combination of factors, chief among them obesity.
Ultimately, the CDC bureaucrats did what they do best: Make new charts instead of correcting the policies that created the problems in the first place.
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