CHARLESTON, W.Va. — West Virginia is one of only four states where the obesity rate among low-income young children, those between the ages of two and four, is rising, according to analysis of new data from the Centers for Disease Control and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
In 2010, the obesity rate for the Mountain State kids enrolled in the federal nutrition program for Women, Infants and Children, also called WIC, was 14.4 percent. For 2014, the number was 16.4 percent.
“That’s quite a huge jump in just four years,” said Albert Lang with the Trust for America’s Health in an interview with MetroNews.
The rate was high enough to put West Virginia at No. 9 nationally, up from No. 32 in 2010, in a study published this week in the Mobidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
Nebraska, North Carolina and Ohio were the only other states that recorded “significant” child obesity rate increases in the same time period.
In many other areas, the movement was in the other direction for kids ages two, three and four who were enrolled in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program.
“We did see that 31 states went down, so that’s kind of a positive trend for the nation and shows the danger in what’s happening in West Virginia, especially knowing that West Virginia has one of the highest adult obesity rates in the country,” Lang said.
Obesity rates in 18 states including West Virginia remained at or above 15 percent for two to four-year-old WIC participants in 2014, compared with 26 states in 2010 with rates above that threshold.
Even with the declines, obesity rates for young people in this particular group are still high with a national average of 14.5 percent. In 1992, the national obesity rate average for the same age group was 8.4 percent.
According to the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, the national obesity for kids ages two, three, four and five across all economic levels was 8.9 percent in 2014.
“Research has really shown that for the last decade or so, if you don’t get off to a healthy start, young children become obese teenagers and they stay obese throughout adulthood,” Lang said.
Overall, in 2014, Utah recorded the lowest obesity rate for young WIC participants at 8.2 percent, while Virginia’s, at 20 percent, was the highest in the U.S., but Virginia’s rate has slightly declined.
In 2000, West Virginia’s WIC obesity rate was 11.9 percent for a No. 33 ranking nationally.
WIC benefits include direct food assistance as well as counseling and education support for about eight million low-income individuals, including an estimated two million pregnant and postpartum women, two million infants and four million kids under age five.