40 Million Kids Under 5 Are Overweight, Obese

A report released Monday by the Commission on Ending Childhood Obesity notes that 41 million children under age 5 are obese or overweight, worldwide; the number is up from 31 million estimates in 1990, researchers say-noting that rates could rise.

In developing countries, the number of overweight children more than doubled to 15.5 million in 2014 from 7.5 million in 1990, driven by globalization and urbanization, a report by the WHO Commission on Ending Childhood Obesity (ECHO) said.

"Overweight and obesity impact on a child's quality of life, as they face a wide range of barriers, including physical, psychological and health consequences," Sania Nishtar, ECHO co-chair, said in a statement, according to Fox News. "We know that obesity can impact on educational attainment too and this, combined with the likelihood that they will remain obese into adulthood, poses major health and economic consequences for them, their families and society as a whole."

Health officials believe that healthy eating and increased physical activity could help the problem, including implementation of measures such as "effective taxation on sugar-sweetened beverages."

"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, via The Associated Press (AP).

Unhealthy habits in childhood could affect us for the rest of our lives as adults, according to some previous studies. In fact, a team of Swedish researchers predicted that human determine their total number of fat cells in childhood. What this means is that while new cells spring up while old ones perish, their numbers change very little following adolescence.

"The take-home message is be careful what you feed your child," Kirsty Spalding, a biologist at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, said via New Scientist in 2008. "Do everything you can to make sure you don't blow out your fat cell number when you are young."

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