57% of U.S. children will become obese adults if trends continue

A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that if current trends in child obesity continue, more than 57% of today’s children in the United States will be obese at age 35. The study also found that excess weight in childhood is predictive of adult obesity, even among young children, and that only children currently at a healthy weight have less than a 50% chance of having obesity as adults.

The researchers used new computational methods and a novel statistical approach to account for long-term population-level trends in weight gain. They pooled height and weight data from five nationally representative longitudinal studies of 41,567 children and adults. Using these data, they created 1,000 virtual populations of 1 million children up to age 19 that were representative of the 2016 U.S. population. They then projected height and weight trajectories from childhood to age 35.

The results showed that obesity will be a significant problem for most children in the United States as they grow older. Of the children predicted to have obesity as adults, half will develop it as children, according to the study simulations. Excess weight gained during childhood can put children on a trajectory that is difficult to change, the authors said. For example, the study found that three out of four two-year-olds with obesity will still have obesity at age 35. For children with severe obesity—a condition that currently affects 4.5 million U.S. children—the risks are even greater: At age two, these children have only a 1-in-5 chance of not having obesity at age 35; at age 5, that chance drops to just 1 in 10.

Even children without obesity face a high risk of adult obesity. The study estimated that for youth aged 2–19 in 2016, more than half will have obesity at age 35—and that most of them do not currently have obesity.

Abstract