Time and time again, public health officials say childhood obesity is a serious problem in the United States. Dr. Christopher F. Bolling, a retired pediatrician and volunteer professor of pediatrics and the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, told Salon he’s personally seen childhood obesity rise in the U.S. through the culmination of his own practice, which he started in the late 1980s.
“I have seen the obesity epidemic from the beginning,” Bolling said. For all of its limitations as a metric for individuals, he elaborated, body mass index (BMI) can provide insights into population patterns. “The percentile that's really exploded, has been that greater than the 99th percentile, the kids with severe obesity,” he said. “And we see illnesses that I never saw in kids in my training in the '80s, like type 2 diabetes, which is a weight-related version of diabetes.”
