Childhood Obesity Rate Doubled: 41 Million Children Overweight

Obesity has been a long problem across the United States, but what makes it even more alarming is the young children who has the condition. In fact, 41 million overweight kids today are younger than 5 years old.

"Childhood obesity has reached alarming rates globally and become an 'exploding nightmare' in the developing world," World Health Organization commission said. "Including Africa where the number of obese and overweight children under five has nearly doubled since 1990, according to US News.

"There are now 41 million overweight or obese children under age 5 worldwide, compared with 31 million in 1990," a released report by WHO panel added. The Commission on Ending Childhood Obesity said that the number of affected kids will increase if governments, educators, food marketers and agribusiness don't give proper actions, the Associated Press suggested.

"It's not the kids' fault. You can't blame a 2-year-old child for being fat and lazy and eating too much," commission co-chair Peter Gluckman said. The committees proposed procedures that could help to combat the condition such as to change school policies to promote healthy eating and physical activity; also, to apply the "effective taxation on sugar-sweetened beverages."

Meanwhile, authors of "Commission on Ending Childhood Obesity" noted that the disorder is worsening because it is not considered life-threatening or a public health issue. In fact, some just said that it is a lifestyle choice by the condition bearers themselves and some families, Medical Xpress reported.

However, the authors' did two years of research in more than 100 countries and proved that governments and global public health bodies are now focus on upending obesity. Moreover, they also emphasized that the main causes of the problem for children are biological factors, unavailable healthy foods in every canteen, irregular exercise in schools and the "unregulated marketing of fattening foods."