Obesity battle starts young for urban poor

Boston Globe: Obesity battle starts young for urban poor

Researchers armed with scales and measuring devices visited nearly 2,000 families in 20 US cities, including Boston, and evaluated the weight and height of 3-year-olds in an unprecedented effort to focus on obesity among the nation's most vulnerable children.

Their finding: 35 percent of the low-income 3-year-olds were overweight or obese, a result more than twice the national rate for obesity among preschool children of all income levels and racial groups. Low-income Hispanic children, the researchers reported in the on line version of the American Journal of Public Health , were the most likely of all to have a weight problem, with 44 percent of those toddlers overweight or obese.