health

Childhood obesity is a condition that develops when children or
teenagers take in more food calories than their bodies burn up. The
most common assessment of obesity is made by calculating an individual’s
body mass index (BMI). Although obesity in adults is measured
by the body mass index (BMI), which does not take age and sex into
account, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) measure
overweight and obesity in children and adolescents by percentiles
of BMI.
The CDC has compiled growth charts on the basis of BMI for boys
and girls at specific ages. The percentile indicates the relative position
of the child’s BMI number among children of the same sex and age.
In screening children for overweight or obesity, the 85th percentile is
regarded as an indicator that a child is “at risk” for overweight. A BMI
above the 95th percentile is defined as “overweight.” The American
Obesity Association (AOA) uses the CDC’s 95th percentile cutoff as
the definition of “obesity,” not just “overweight.” There are also some
researchers who define obesity in children as body weight at least
20 percent higher than a healthy weight for a child of that height, or
a body fat percentage above 25 percent in boys or above 32 percent
in girls. A child’s primary care doctor may use any or all of these standards
for evaluating whether an overweight child is obese.