Philly.com – Kimberly Garrison
” According to the most recent national data, we continue to fail at putting a serious dent in childhood obesity. There was serious celebration a few years ago when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced a significant drop (from 14 percent to 8.4 percent) in obesity for preschoolers. Sadly, for older children and adolescents, obesity has remained stubbornly high – 17 percent, which translates to 12.7 million American children. The CDC defines child and adolescent obesity as a body mass index at or above the 95th percentile of the sex-specific CDC BMI for age growth. A 10-year-old boy of average height (56 inches) who weighs 102 pounds would have a BMI of 22.9, which would place him in the 95th percentile for BMI and therefore define him as obese.”(more)