An abstract of “Racial and Ethnic Differentials in Children’s Overweight and Obesity Among 3-Year-Olds” is available from the American Journal of Public Health.
Thirty-five percent of low-income preschoolers are overweight or obese, and Hispanic children are twice as likely as non-Hispanic white or black children to have a weight problem, says a study published in the December issue of the American Journal of Public Health.
The study—conducted by researchers from Columbia University, Princeton University, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison—examined a database of more than 2,000 3-year-olds in low-income families in 20 large U.S. cities. Researchers were unable to explain the weight-problem differences between the racial and ethnic groups, but they were able to determine that a child’s birth weight, whether a child takes a bottle to bed, and the mother’s weight did play a role in how heavy a child tended to be.
