The number of overweight students in the Washington suburbs has swollen to levels typical of less affluent areas, with at least one-fifth overweight or obese throughout the region.
Typically, children in poorer, urban areas have higher obesity rates, while affluent suburbs report much lower rates, because of higher education levels and bigger grocery budgets.
Living proof is in the District, where the D.C. Health Department found that 43 percent of D.C. Public Schools students were overweight or obese last year, one of the highest rates in the nation.
But several factors are at play in the suburbs, said Dr. Tania Heller, director of the Washington Center For Eating Disorders & Adolescent Obesity.
“They’re watching TV, playing video games,” Heller said. “There’s so much access to [food] that’s inadequate and unhealthy, especially if both parents work and the child is coming home to an empty house.”
Even Montgomery’s and Fairfax’s reputations as top school districts could factor into weight gain: “A lot of people are telling me they’re eating more snacks when they’re up doing their homework until 1 or 2 in the morning,” Heller said.
Parents may not even realize that their children are in an unhealthy situation: fewer than 25 percent of parents of overweight children recognize their child as “overweight,” according to an Inova Health System survey of Northern Virginia counties.
Becky Domokos-Bays, director of food and nutrition services for Alexandria City Schools, said she did not know why her district has a high 40 percent rate. “We’ve talked about that in school board advisory meetings for a number of years,” she said.
Children with a body mass index above the 85th percentile are considered “at risk of overweight,” and those above the 95th percentile are labeled “obese.”
Thirty-one percent of children ages 2 to 19 nationwide are overweight or obese. And 80 percent of children who were overweight between ages 10 and 15 were obese by the age of 25, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Hitting the scale
Rates of students who are overweight or at risk of becoming overweight locally:
» Alexandria: 40 percent
» Prince William: 30 pecent
» Fairfax: 25 percent
» Arlington: 25 percent
» 21 percent of Montgomery children between the ages of 2 and 5 are overweight — the highest rate of all counties in Maryland, which averaged 17 percent.
» 31 percent of children ages 2 to 19 nationwide are overweight or obese
Sources: Maryland Department of Health and Hygiene, Inova Health System, Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention
