From Your Health Journal…..”The Statesmen Journal is an excellent publication in Oregon, and I strongly recommend your visiting the site (link below). The article reviewed today discusses how Oregon was the only state in the union last year with a decline in childhood obesity, but now, more states are showing a similar decline. Oregon had a 14.1 percent childhood obesity rate in 2003, slightly below the 14.8 percent average. By 2007 Oregon’s rate had fallen to 9.6 percent, while the national average climbed to 16.4 percent. It is nice to read such encouraging articles, and hope this trend continues. Please visit the Statesmen site for the full article.”

From the article…..

Two years ago, Oregon achieved the distinction of being the only state in the nation to report a decline in the rate of childhood obesity. At the time Oregon looked like either an enviable outlier or a case of mistaken statistics.

But now reports of falling percentages of obese children are popping up around the country. Maybe real progress is starting to be made in the fight against the epidemic of childhood obesity, with Oregon leading the way.

A U.S. Department of Health and Human Services report in 2010 looked at the percentage of obese 10- to 17-year-olds in each state between 2003 and 2007. The report defined an obese child as one whose body mass index would have placed him or her among top 5 percent for his or her age group before the obesity epidemic began.

Oregon had a 14.1 percent childhood obesity rate in 2003, slightly below the 14.8 percent average. By 2007 Oregon’s rate had fallen to 9.6 percent, while the national average climbed to 16.4 percent. No other state had a declining rate, while Oregon’s fell by almost one-third. Seven states, all of them in the South, had rates above 20 percent in 2007.

… Oregon had taken modest steps to improve nutrition and health education in schools, but so had many other states. Oregon’s rate of breast-feeding is among the nation’s highest, and infants who are breast-fed are less likely to become obese — but obesity also correlates strongly with poverty, and Oregon’s rate of childhood poverty is high.

Last week the New York Times reported that public health officials in a number of communities around the country find themselves scratching their heads for the same reasons. The obesity rate fell 3 percent in Los Angeles and 5.5 percent in New York City between 2007 and 2011.

To read the full article…..Click here