ABSTRACT
During recent decades, obesity during growth has developed into a growing global epidemic, with a large variation in secular trends across countries (Walker et al. 2001, James 2002, James et al. 2004). More recently, an increasing number of children of preschool age are becoming obese; the main reasons for this phenomenon have been proposed (Hawkins and Law 2006) and also with regard to public perceptions (Evans et al. 2005). Our understanding of this problem in children is limited because of unsatisfactory comparable representative data from different countries. However, a combination of predictors, which could be assessed during the initial years of life, could improve the predictability and evaluation of overweight especially at school entry; a classi cation and regression tree analysis approach was suggested (Toschke et al. 2005). For example, in German kindergartens recently, each tenth child was found to be overweight. This situation can be expected in other countries too, and may only worsen in the future. Macro-environmental and socio-demographic determinants of childhood obesity were also analyzed (Moreno et al. 2004). The most serious problem is that childhood obesity usually predisposes to obesity later on in life: the BMI in childhood was found to be related to adult adiposity (Bogalusa Heart Study; Friedman et al. 2005), with accompanying health risks. In this connection, international child overweight guidelines can also be utilized for the prediction of coronary heart disease factors (Katzmarczyk et al. 2003). Comorbidities of obesity were already found in preschoolers (Wake et al. 2008). Moreover, the quality of life of obese children may not be advantageous (Williams et al. 2005). Racial/ethnic disparities were found in 4-years old U.S. childrenhighest prevalence in U.S./Indian Alaskan children (Anderson and Whitaker 2009).
