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Study finds sex-specific ethnic groups in U.S. are getting fatter
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Seventeen year-old Marissa Hamilton logs her meals in her self monitoring journal at Wellspring Academy October 19, 2009 in Reedley, California. Struggling with her weight, seventeen year-old Marissa Hamilton enrolled at the Wellspring Academy, a special school that helps teens and college level students lose weight along with academic courses. When Marissa first started her semester at Wellspring she weighed in at 340 pounds and has since dropped over 40 pounds of weight in the first two months of the program. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 16 percent of children in the US ages 6-19 years are overweight or obese, three times the amount since 1980.
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A new study reveals that American children and teenagers have become fatter over the last decade and are more likely to develop diabetes or heart disease. Social and ethnic status is a factor.
Black girls, particularly, tend to develop more fatty tissue, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and National Institute on Aging.
Scientists moved beyond body mass index measurements in this study to include waist size and underarm skinfold thickness.
The study indicates some groups gained more belly fat over time. Midsection fat poses greater health risks down the road for obesity-related illness, like type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
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The study considered sex, age and race over 10 years. It’s one of the few projects to examine social/ethnic disparities and measure weight gain/muscle depletion in kids and teens over time.
The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestives and Kidney Diseases supported the research. The peer-review medical journal, The International Journal of Pediatric Obesity is scheduled to publish the study online Thursday.
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