The childhood obesity epidemic: impact on endothelial function.

Overweight and obesity have become major public health issues. According to the most recent National Health and Nutrition Survey (NHANES III, 1988 to 1991), 40% of all men and 26% of all women in the United States are overweight, and 20% and 26%, respectively, are obese. Projected adult obesity rates are 30% in 2015 and 40% in 2025.1 Although the public awareness of adult obesity is growing, the magnitude of this problem among children still remains widely unknown. According to the NHANES III database, the percentage of overweight children ( 95th percentile) has tripled between the 1960s and the 1990s and today reaches approximately 14% among both boys and girls. The steepness of this increase is twice as high as in the adult population, where the increase of obesity in the same time period was 1.6-fold.