The CDC reports Progress on Childhood Obesity — Many States Show Declines
Good news because as the CDC reports:
Children who are overweight or obese as preschoolers are 5 times as likely as normal-weight children to be overweight or obese as adults.
Therefore, it’s a public health issue that:
About 1 in 8 preschoolers is obese in the US.
The results are most encouraging:
Obesity among low-income preschoolers declined, from 2008 through 2011, in 19 of 43 states and territories studied.
For 18% of US states “among participants, ages 2 to 4, in the Pediatric Nutrition Surveillance System between the years 2008 and 2011.” That would be “low-income infants, children, and women in federally funded maternal and child health programs.” There are 8 million children ages five and under in the WIC program; “WIC serves 53 percent of all infants born in the United States.”
Why such a sharp decline in the obesity rate of those children? Where is interesting. No change in 23 states, decline in 19, and an increase in three: Colorado, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee. No obvious patterns.
California WIC eliminated the juice rebate in as of July 2008 and at the federal level, WIC cut the juice allowance by 50% in October 2009. This was a change that many pediatricians had requested. Correlation isn’t causation, but at a macro-level, this one looks strong. Not enough information to speculate on why the obesity rate merely leveled off The leveling off in those 21 “no change” states, but the administration of the WIC program in those states may have been different. Likely a combination of factors and could include education and breastfeeding that has increased to 77%
Idaho was the state with the most breast-feeding moms, with about 91.8 percent of new mothers breast-feeding at some point. California, Oregon, Colorado and New Hampshire rounded out the top five.
At the six-month marker, the top states for breast-feeding mothers were Idaho, California, Oregon, Hawaii and Utah. By one year, Utah, Idaho, California, Hawaii and Vermont moms held the top spots.
Looks like a good start.
But things are either not going so well or are moving in the right direction in NY public schools as Diane Ravitch discusses:
Test scores across New York State have collapsed, new results released Wednesday showed. Last year, 55% of students in the state passed the reading test; 65% passed the math test. This year, only 31% passed both subjects. In New York City, the proportion passing the state tests fell from 47% in reading and 60% in math to only 26% in reading and 30% in math.
Did the students suddenly get stupid? Did their teachers become incompetent overnight? Did schools fail en masse?
More failing students = more failing schools = more public school closing = more corporate private schools = corporate ka-ching? That’s merely stage one in the anti-public school agenda.
