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CHICAGO — A striking new study says almost 1 in 5 American 4-year-olds is obese, and the rate is alarmingly higher among American Indian children, with nearly a third of them obese.
Researchers were surprised to see differences by race at so early an age.
Overall, more than half a million 4-year-olds are obese, the study suggests. Obesity is more common in Latino and black youngsters too, but the disparity is most startling in American Indians, whose rate is almost double that of whites.
The study is an analysis of nationally representative height and weight data on 8,550 preschoolers born in 2001. The results appear in Monday’s Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.
