Obese World Cup Soccer Fans Get Extra Wide Seating in Brazil

iStockphoto/Thinkstock(NEW YORK ) -- Brazil is famous for tiny bikinis and a national passion for all things sports and fitness. Perhaps that’s why it’s so shocking the country is faced with an obesity problem — one grown so large that the 2014 World Cup stadiums being built for this summer’s Confederations Cup will include seating for fans with extra wide bottoms.

A statement posted on  the Brazilian government’s World Cup website reads in part, “From the total of 63,903 seats, 1,675 are reserved for obese people, or people with disabilities.

“This number corresponds to 2.4 percent of the stadium’s capacity, which is more than the minimum requirement of 1 percent anticipated by the World Cup General Bill and administrative rule No 205 of the Ministry of Sport that regulates the issue. At the Castelão, 335 seats are reserved for wheel chair users, 1,220 for people with reduced mobility and 120 for obese people,” the statement said.

According to the U.K. newspaper The Sun, the stadium seats will be double-wide and accommodate up to 560 pounds. In case the extra large dimensions aren’t enough of a giveaway, the seats will also be identified by their bright blue color.

The price tag for all that extra room will be bloated to twice the cost of regular-sized seating.

Despite its reputation as a country filled with svelte, toned and tanned citizens, the average Brazilian silhouette has ballooned in size. Forty-eight percent of Brazilian adult women and 50 percent of men are now considered overweight, according to a survey done by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE.)

One in seven Brazilian adults is classified as obese. That’s a spike of nearly 10 percent since 2004 and more the double the obesity rate recorded just four decades ago.

As one of the largest producers of sugar in the world, part of the Brazil’s weight problem stems from an insatiable appetite for sweets, especially in liquid form, said Barry Popkin, a W. R. Kenan Jr. distinguished professor in the school of public health at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.

“More than 18 percent of their calories come from beverages, which is only slightly lower than the U.S.,” he said. “Sugar in food is just an empty calorie, but when added to coffee, soda and other drinks, it adds calories but doesn’t reduce consumption.”

Popkin has written several papers based on Brazil’s first-ever national diet survey, completed two years ago. Besides a thirst for sweetened beverages, he also noted that Brazilians snack more and eat more processed foods than ever before, and they watch more TV and exercise less than at any point in their history despite a government campaign to get them up and moving.

Health experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) and other international health agencies have warned if the trend continued, Brazilian obesity rates could match those of the U.S. as soon as 2022.

Even now, Americans haven’t cornered the market on obesity. The U.S. only ranks eighth among the world’s fattest nations.

The distinction for fattest country belongs to the tiny Caribbean island of Nauru where, according to WHO statistics, a whopping 95 percent of inhabitants have a “pre-obese” Body Mass Index of 25 or higher.

The average Nauruan’s BMI is 34 — a label that puts Nauruans in WHO’s “Class I” category of obesity. Class III, or super-obese, is the highest level of obesity and reserved for those with a BMI of 40 or higher. A BMI between 18.5 and 24.99 is considered healthy.

The U.S. does win the crown for the greatest rise in BMI of all developed nations between 1980 and the present.

With more than 70 percent of residents classified as overweight or obese, Mexico is the heaviest Latin American nation, Popkin’s studies show. And despite diet books extolling the virtues of a French diet, Popkin found that Scandinavian countries have the lowest number of overweight people of all the high-income countries; just under 10 percent of Scandinavians are classified as overweight. The title of thinnest nation in the low-income category belongs to Chad, where fewer than five percent of people are overweight.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Study Tying Women’s Weight Gain to Housework Draws Fire for Coke Link

Hemera/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- A group of researchers now says that one reason modern women may be packing on the pounds is because they’re not doing the heavy lifting around the house that they once did.

“We looked at 91 different activities — going to the gym, walking the dog — and the only thing that influenced their energy expenditure was the work in the home,” said Edward Archer, a University of South Carolina research fellow and the study’s lead author. “That’s why the study focused on that.”

In the study, a team of University of South Carolina researchers at the Arnold School of Public Health compared the activity logs kept by stay-at-home women from 1965 until today and found that in 1965, women spent 25.7 hours a week pushing tank-like vacuums, dusting, mopping, cooking and washing.

But in 2010, women spent 13.3 hours a week on household chores — and they are also 22 pounds heavier than their 1965 counterparts.

The results were published this month in PLOS One.

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Archer said the study was not intended to tell women they are fat because they don’t do housework.

“The take-home message is not that women should be doing more housework but rather that women and individuals in general should find ways of integrating physical activity into their day,” Archer said. “How you spend your day determines health....How you spend your day determines the health of the next generation.”

Other experts, however, said the obesity epidemic was caused by a long list of factors that included not just physical activity but diet, genetics and economic status. They also questioned the motives of Coca-Cola, which sponsored the study.

“It makes no sense for Coca-Cola to be funding studies on causes of obesity because they are one of the causes for obesity,” said Kelly Brownell, director of the Rudd Center for food policy and obesity at Yale University. “It would be like taking money from the tobacco industry to find other causes of lung cancer. It really makes no sense at all.”

Women also fired back on Twitter.

“The 1950s called and they want their article back,” said one tweet.

Archer said the source of the study’s funding was “irrelevant.”

“We should be turning focus on ourselves,” he said. “What we can do for ourselves, especially in the context of our health and especially in the context of our children.”

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Chairs, Buses and More Redesigned to Accommodate Obese People

Digital Vision/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- In the past year, some hospitals spent as much as $5 million to update and enlarge their facilities to accommodate obese patients, according to a recently released report by Novation LLC, an Irving, Texas, health-care supply chain company that produces annual commentary on the cost of bariatric care.

Larger patients need supersize beds, chairs and wheelchairs, open MRI machines and toilets bolted to the floor instead of the wall, the report noted.  But with more than 200,000 weight-loss surgeries performed each year at a cost of up to $26,000 per surgery, many hospitals consider the extra cost a wise investment.

Hospitals are just one example of the way the world is adapting to accommodate expanding waistlines.  Here are six more areas that have been recently plumped up in response to the more than 68 percent of Americans who are now considered either overweight or obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:

The Workplace

Studies estimate the total cost of obesity to U.S. employers at $73 billion a year.  That number doesn't factor in the everyday ways businesses are changing the physical workspace for a plus-size work force.

Take the office chair.  Chair seller ErgoHuman in Austin, Texas, said the average office chair is for a 250-300 pound person, tops.  Clearly, that's not strong enough for many American workers.

Seeing a need, Ergogenesis was one of many manufacturers that introduced chairs for the extra large in the past few years.  Its Bodybilt chairs were designed with an extra wide "bariatric" seat pan that can support someone who weighs up to 600 pounds.  The chair has a hefty price tag too -- $1,300 -- but the company reports it's selling briskly.  One government agency bought 645 of them in 2012.

Buses

If it seems as if it's harder to get a seat on the bus in recent years, that would be right.  In 2011, the Federal Transit Authority proposed raising the assumed average weight per bus passenger from 150 pounds to 175 pounds, which could mean that across the country, fewer people will be allowed on city transit buses.

The transit authority also proposed adding an additional few inches of floor space per passenger.  The changes are being sought "to acknowledge the expanding girth of the average passenger," the agency said in a statement.

Clothes

A woman's size 14 at the Gap in 2008 fit someone with a 37-inch bust, 29-inch waist and 39-inch hips.  Today, that size has crept up to fit someone who's 37.5-29.5-40.

Many clothing manufacturers now engage in this "vanity sizing" because they know the psychological boost someone might get from wearing a garment two sizes smaller, even when they've undergone some obvious expansion.  Today's size 4 was a size 8 two decades ago.

Scales

"Finding a scale that went higher than 300 pounds was nearly impossible a few years ago," said Gary Shane, the sales manager for the Precision Weighing Co., a website that sells scales.  "Now they routinely go up to 400 or 500 pounds."

Shane's company does a brisk business selling models such as the Siltec Model WS1000, which measure up to 1,000 pounds of body weight.  Some are sold to TV production companies whose programs focus on people needing to lose big.

It isn't just a matter of registering larger numbers; a well-designed obesity or "bariatric" scale has a significantly roomier platform to accommodate larger feet plus support bars or arm rests.  Shane noted that the new specialty scales are an improvement over those of a decade ago, when hospitals weighed in heftier patients on basement laundry scales.

Toilets

Extreme obesity complicates the simplest things, even something as basic as going to the bathroom.  Enter Big John, makers of oversize toilet seats.  They cater to the more than 72 million overweight Americans by offering generously padded seats that are 19 inches wide and 2 inches taller than the standard seat, which measures 14 inches wide.  They have a weight capacity of 1,200 pounds.

Big John also sells supports that can be placed under the bowl to bolster the typical wall hung toilet, which has been known to crack or collapse under heavy loads.  Since the company started making the seats in 2004, revenue has skyrocketed, increasing 50 percent every year, according to the company.

Caskets

Even in death, some people require extra leg room.  Laurens Fish, director of the Weed-Corley Fish Funeral Home near Austin, Texas, said he's begun selling caskets up to 54 inches wide, more than double the size of the standard 24-inch width.  When Goliath Casket began producing triple-wide caskets, which hold up to 700 pounds comfortably, in the late 1980s, it sold an average of one per year.  Now, it ships half a dozen models a month.

As in life, having some extra girth makes death more expensive too.  Super-size caskets carry a price tag of up to $3,000 more than the average-priced casket.  If a larger plot and concrete vault are required, that can add $1,000 to burial costs.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Stigma Against Fat People Is the Last Acceptable Prejudice, Studies Find

Jupiterimages/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- At a time when obesity is seen as a serious public health threat, research has found a growing prejudice against fat people.

Last week, the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University published a study suggesting that male jurors didn't administer blind justice when it came to plus-size female defendants.

Female jurors displayed no prejudice against fat defendants but men -- especially lean men -- were far more likely to slap a guilty verdict on an overweight woman and were quicker to label her a repeat offender with an "awareness of her crimes."

Another recent study by the Center for Creative Leadership found that top managers with a high body mass index were judged more harshly and seen as less effective than their slimmer colleagues by their peers, both at work and in interpersonal relationships.

Rebecca Puhl, one of the Yale researchers who co-wrote the juror study, said these displays of fat stigma are par for the course.

"Thinness has come to symbolize important values in our society, values such as discipline, hard work, ambition and willpower.  If you're not thin, then you don't have them," she said.

Previous research by Puhl and her associates found that prejudice against fat people was pervasive and translated into inequities across broad areas of life.

Some examples: Fifty percent of doctors found that fat patients were "awkward, ugly, weak-willed and unlikely to comply with treatment," and 24 percent of nurses said they were repulsed by their obese patients.  Nearly 30 percent of teachers said that becoming obese was "the worst thing that can happen to someone" -- and more than 70 percent of obese people said they had been ridiculed about their weight by a family member.

Kenlie Tiggeman, a political consultant who lives in New Orleans, said she's never needed a study to highlight hostility against fat people.  As someone who has lost 120 pounds but has a 100 more to lose, she lives it.

Last year, Tiggeman was thrown off a Southwest Airlines flight not once but twice because the carrier deemed her "too fat to fly."  According to Tiggeman and witnesses, she was stopped at the gate both times by airline employees who proceeded to quiz her loudly about her weight and dress size before denying her boarding access.

Far from being an isolated incidence, Tiggeman said the experience was symptomatic of what she encounters every day.

"Just last week I was at the swimming pool in my gym when I overheard a woman on her cell tell a friend she was whale watching," Tiggeman said.  "She was looking right at me.  I know she was talking about me."

People have no qualms aiming such overt cruelty at obese people, Puhl said, because there are few consequences.  She said that fat stigma is rarely challenged and often ignored.  In effect, it's the last acceptable prejudice.

"There are no federal laws on the books that make it illegal to discriminate on the basis of body weight, so on the whole it remains legal.  That sends a message that it's no big deal," said Puhl.

Puhl suspects that public health campaigns branding obesity as a disease are sometimes perceived as criticizing individuals rather than the environmental and social factors that lead to weight gain.  This, she said, gives some people license to engage in public fat-shaming.

She also believes media portrayals of heavy people as fat, lazy and gluttonous do them no favors.

"Overweight people are usually shown in stereotypical ways -- engaged in out of control eating or bingeing on junk food -- and they are often shown as the target of humor or ridicule," she pointed out.  "With the amount of media we all consume, it's no wonder these stereotypes stick."

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Coca-Cola Sugar Hiccup: Soda Giant on the Defense

Ramin Talaie/Bloomberg via Getty Images(NEW YORK) -- Coca-Cola has been a staple in American lives for more than 100 years and its iconic advertisements have shaped the soda industry from its 1930s depictions of jolly ol' St. Nick to its recent polar bear commercials.

One from 1961 even advertised Coke as a diet beverage -- "There's no waistline worry with Coke, you know," the pitchwoman said.

Most studies and experts agree that claim is not true -- but now, a new ad from Coke claims its low-sugar and sugar-free beverages can to be part of the obesity solution. The two-minute commercial was set to air on national cable news stations starting Monday night.

It may be the company's reaction to a full-fledged assault on sugary sodas that has included school bans, proposed taxes and an often-mocked New York City effort to eliminate the sale of sodas larger than 16 ounces.

Coca-Cola said in a news release that the goal was to "highlight some of the specifics behind the company's ongoing commitment to deliver more beverage choices, including low- and no-calorie options, and to clearly communicate the calorie content of all its products."

The commercial, called "Coming Together," included facts about the company's initiatives, noting, "Of over 650 beverages, we now offer 180 ... low- and no-calorie choices."

The average American drinks 45 gallons of sugary soft drinks a year, equivalent to one-and-a-half barrels of soda pop. In fact, sugary sodas are the single largest source of calories in the American diet. Even the smallest can, the eight-ounce size, has the equivalent of approximately six sugar cubes. The 20-ounce size has around 14 sugar cubes and the 7-Eleven "Super Big Gulp" more than 30.

Critics argue they are not ordinary calories, either, but are empty of nutrition and don't tell the body it is full.

"With beverages, we'll drink the calories and then consume more foods on top of those calories," Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), told ABC News. "When the body eats a steak or asparagus, it senses that it consumed calories and then will reduce its caloric intake later in the day. It doesn't happen with soft drinks."

CSPI published a video that went viral just this past fall called "The Real Bears," which graphically depicted the health effects of over-consumption of sugary beverages.

Coca-Cola, the world's largest beverage company, also promotes exercise programs to work off what you drink. A second new spot debuting Wednesday during American Idol, called "Be OK," according to a news release, will make "it perfectly clear right up front that a can of Coca-Cola has 140 calories. This spot also encourages people to have some fun burning those calories off."

Coca-Cola declined comment to ABC News on the commercials but referred reporters to Russell Pate, a professor with Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina. He told ABC News that the changes made by the food and beverage industry should be "supported, and more improvement is to be encouraged."

He added that a major origin of the obesity problem is "declining physical activity over recent decades."

"I think we have millions of Americans trying to eat down to their level of inactivity, and it's not working well," Pate said. "I believe strongly we will have to increase the physical activity level of our population if we want to overcome the obesity epidemic that we are currently challenged by."

Coke is not the only soda company getting heat. Pepsi hired Beyonce for undisclosed millions to promote its product at the Super Bowl and in new TV ads.

Mark Bittman, food writer for The New York Times, said the superstar is making a "bad decision" to work with the beverage company.

"She has associated herself with Michelle Obama's Let's Move campaign -- a campaign to eat better [and] move more ... and now [she is] pushing Pepsi, really quite the opposite of that," he said. "She might consider giving some or all of this money to charity."

Both Beyonce's public relations team and PepsiCo, the maker of Pepsi, declined to comment to ABC News.

A spokesman for the American Beverage Association, which represents the non-alcoholic beverage industry, told ABC News that it has partnered with Michelle Obama on her "Let's Move" campaign, as well as Bill Clinton to encourage a "meaningful impact on the complex issue of obesity."

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Male Jurors Biased Against Obese Women, Study Shows

Brand X Pictures/Thinkstock(NEW HAVEN, Conn.) -- Male jurors are more likely to find obese women guilty than lean women, but they didn’t show the same weight bias against their own gender, a Yale University study found.

Researchers showed 471 study participants a photo of one of four people -- a lean woman, an obese woman, a lean man or an obese man -- and asked them to determine whether that person was guilty of an imaginary check fraud crime on a scale of 1 to 5.  Men were more likely to find the obese woman guilty than the lean woman, and the results were statistically significant.

“I think it’s one more nail in the coffin of how painful it is for people that are of larger sizes,” Lynn Grefe, president and CEO of the National Eating Disorders Association.  “These people could be healthy.  We’re judging people.  We’re making stereotypes.  We did this with race years ago.  We did it with religion.”

She added that while obese people are perceived as lazy or sloppy, people should remember that obese people don’t choose to be large.  They may have medical problems, different genes or a newly identified mental illness associated with binge eating.

Lead researcher Natasha Schvey said she and her team controlled for age and attractiveness by using the same woman twice and photo-shopping her to be both lean and obese.  They did the same for the men.

Schvey said she’d read about weight bias in other settings, such as office environments, but wondered whether it existed in the justice system.

“This seemed like a critical gap in the literature on weight stigma,” Schvey said, adding that it’s not clear whether negative socioeconomic perception based on body mass factored into the results.  “Since this is really just the first study of its kind, we just wanted to determine whether or not something might be going on.”

Ultimately, she said, the results were “disappointing but not entirely surprising.”  Men tend to judge women more harshly than men, and women tend to be more sympathetic.  The female study participants showed no weight bias.

“I think [it may be] because many women have gone on diets and had difficult times, and they’re not meeting their weight goals,” Grefe said.  “I think they’re more understanding.  A piece of it is [that] they feel sorry for them because they’ve been through it themselves.”

Grefe thinks there should to be anti-discrimination laws on the books for weight just as there are for race, religion and sexual orientation.

But women can take some comfort in the fact that mock jury studies isolate specific factors that rarely make their way into actual jury verdicts, said Paula Hannaford-Agor, the director of the Center for Jury Studies.

“Most studies of actual jury trials show that the weight of the evidence is the single most important factor affecting jury verdicts,” Hannaford-Agor said.  “Factors such as victim, defendant and juror demographic characteristics only account for a negligible portion of variation in jury verdicts.”

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Will Smart Fork Stop Stupid Eating?

HAPILABS(LAS VEGAS) -- At the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, a company is betting its new fork will be the latest weapon in the battle of the bulge.

HAPILABS' HAPIfork is designed to monitor a user's meal times and eating habits, vibrating when an eater chows down too quickly, or takes too many bites too soon.

What's more, all of that information can be downloaded to an user's computer or phone after every meal so they can track their eating habits via a special app.

The fork will be available to order beginning in April, at a cost of $99.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Company Patents DIY Stomach Pump

Jupiterimages/Thinkstock(LONDON) -- Inventor Dean Kamen, the man who tried to make exercise obsolete with the Segway, is now using technology to shortcut sensible eating.

According to the U.K.'s Independent, Kamen has applied for a patent for a device that allows people who can't stop eating too much to literally pump excess food from their own stomach.

The device would attach to a valve that would be surgically installed on a patient.  Kamen reportedly envisions the new add-on as an alternative to other kinds of surgery that have become a more popular option for the morbidly obese.

Trials are already underway, and the paper reports this early version of the pump has clogged at times with a variety of food, including vegetables, french fries and Chinese food.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Weight Loss Reality Star "Ruby" Dishes on Show’s Failure

http://www.rubyschallenge.com/(NEW YORK) -- Starving herself then bingeing on Cool Whip and Graham crackers; shifting her weight to trick the scale; even disguising herself and going through McDonald’s Drive-Thru — these are the kinds of self-sabotage behaviors Ruby, the hit weight-loss reality show that ran from 2008 to 2011, was supposed to be an antidote to.

But that’s what Ruby Gettinger, the show’s star, did, she said in an interview with 20/20.

For four seasons, Ruby, which aired on the Style Network, followed Gettinger’s every move as she struggled to go from more than 700 pounds to 250. Her bubbly personality won hundreds of thousands of fans, who cheered her on through achievements like driving, riding a bike and swimming.

Dr. Oz, Regis and Kelly and even Oprah came calling, making Ruby the face of obesity.

With the show came counselors, a nutrition plan, trainers — all working toward the goal: 250 pounds.

But secretly, Gettinger now says, off camera her goal was dramatically different.

“I never, ever say this, but in my head, my goal was 128,” Gettinger told ABC News’ Amy Robach. “I wanted to be so thin that someone would look at me and say, ‘Are you anorexic?’”

She didn’t quite get to 128, but after season one, she was at 373, almost 130 pounds less than where she began. In the second season, while having some personal setbacks, she still managed to pull out a new low, 357. At the start of season three, Ruby was arguably one of the most documented stories of obesity and weight loss in America.

While the show brought on a celebrity high, the pressure to keep losing was bringing her down, causing stress and meltdowns.

“I didn’t realize this is such an addiction,” Gettinger said. “Like alcoholism, drugs, you know?”

Tennie McCarty, who was a counselor on Ruby, runs Shades of Hope, a treatment center for those with eating disorders. She said food addiction is not only real — it can be even worse than alcohol and drugs.

“[With] alcoholism, drug addiction, nicotine addiction … [y]ou could live the rest of your life and not drink alcohol, take drugs or smoke nicotine,” she said, whereas food is everywhere, and you have to eat.

Ruby was spiraling out of control — and going off her program for healthy weight loss.

“There was a lot of pressure,” she said. “It made me start starving myself to death.  I literally did not eat for four days because I knew I had to weigh. … And then after I weighed, I would binge eat.”

One day, Gettinger’s niece came over, and she had some Chicken McNuggets.

“For a week after that,” Gettinger said, “I would go through the Drive-Thru — and I’m not kidding you — put a hat on, glasses, so no one would recognize me. … But just in case they’d recognize me, I would have the phone like this and go, Okay, now, what is it that you wanted? … It was two McNuggets? Okay. …That’s just horrible to admit. But it was almost like just that one bit triggers something in me.”

Gettinger stopped using her exercise equipment, and covered up her secret.

“When I was in a bad place I didn’t use them at all. I’d get a washcloth and dust them off. I didn’t want people to think, ‘She’s not using her equipment.’”

But the numbers on the scale couldn’t lie, so Gettinger devised a way to deceive the scale, the show and the fans rooting for her.

“I could figure out a way to lean to this way or that way,” Gettinger said. “I could make a 28-to-30-pound difference.”

She even believed her own lie, Gettinger said.

“[I was] almost getting excited later on in the day, because people are bragging about the number that I have convinced myself that is the number, too,” she said.

The show’s producers weren’t fooled and sent Gettinger to a weight-loss camp to restore her motivation. Nothing worked, and Ruby was cancelled, leaving fans wondering what happened.

“[The producers] said, ‘We love you … we’re just not going to continue the show,” Gettinger said. “No one said this, but my personal belief is [they cancelled it] because I gained weight,” she added. She said she blamed herself for the show’s end and for “letting so many people down.”

Soon after the show ended, Gettinger’s brother died. She lay in bed, depressed and eating, she said. She gained 50 pounds, taking her back almost to 400.

“I woke up with, like, This is it, I’m doing this. It’s not about the show; it’s not about anything else. I got to finish this for me.”

Desperate and with no money, Gettinger turned to her former trainers from the TV show.

“I said, Of course, I’m here for you no matter what,” said Shazia Edmonds. “That phone call to me was so refreshing. It felt like she gets it, she wants to do it on her own.”

Gettinger has named her new campaign Ruby’s Challenge, and has a website to encourage fans to watch her progress and join themselves. She is back in the gym regularly and eating right, and has worked her weight down to 360.

Gettinger said she had learned some hard yet valuable lessons: “The hard road is the best road, and just in the past two months I have never worked out [so] hard, been so strict, been so consistent.”

Copyright  2013 ABC News Radio

Obesity Rates Among Preschoolers Declining, Study Suggests

iStockphoto/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- Have parents and pediatricians gotten the message about the dangers of obesity in young kids?  A new study out Tuesday suggests that the obesity rates of kids ages 2 to 4 may be declining for the first time in 12 years.

According to data from the Pediatric Nutrition Surveillance System, there's been a steady increase in obesity since doctors began monitoring kids nationwide in 1998.  But in 2010, rates among kids in low-income families were down, with 30,000 fewer kids registering obese than the year before.

"This was actually the first national study that showed a slight decrease in the rate of obesity in preschool age children living in low-income families," ABC Medical Contributor Dr. Jennifer Ashton says.

While that's a step in the right direction, it's just the tip of the iceberg, Ashton points out.

"[The] good news of this study is that it does appear that possibly the message is getting through that we really need to be aggressive about preventing and managing obesity, even in preschool age children.  The bad news here is that at a rate of 14.9 percent, that still leaves approximately eight million obese preschool age children in this country," Ashton says.

"Make no mistake, we need to do much much better in the future," adds Ashton, who notes that kids who are overweight are more likely to become obese as adults.

Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio