Obesity rates among American Children


Factoid Answer

In 1972, 5% of American children and adolescents were obese. In 2020, what proportion of American children and adolescents were obese?

  • 19.7%

For the 1972 data, see Cheryl Fryar and colleagues, “Prevalence of obesity among children and adolescents: United States, trends 1963-1965 through 2009-2010,” published September 13 2012 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, full text online at www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/obesity_child_09_10/obesity_child_09_10.htm. For the 2020 data, see the CDC page “Childhood obesity facts,” https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/childhood.html, accessed January 3 2023.

For more about why this happened and what you can do about it, please see chapter 4 of my book The Collapse of  Parenting.

 

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