STOCKHOLM, July 14 (Xinhua) -- A study from European Childhood Obesity Group (ECOG) showed that child obesity in developed world is stabilizing and even decreasing in France, but experts warned against being happy too early for that at the ongoing 11th International Congress of Obesity in Stockholm on Wednesday.
Marie Francoise Rolland-Cachera from ECOG presented that developed countries including the U.S., Britain, France, and Greece had experienced a constant increase of child obesity between 1970 and 2000 at a rate ranging from 12 percent in northern Europe to 38 percent in Southern Europe.
"But from 2000 to 2006, America, Britain, France and Greece as well as many other countries all saw stabilization of child obesity due to various efforts made by governments and societies," said Rolland-Cachera.
"The trend is that high income family child obesity stabilizes earlier than low income family child obesity, but later they all stabilized," she said.
Research also showed that all the European countries have realized child nutrition targets, some people contribute that as one factor to stabilization.
But some participants say that the obesity rates in developed countries are still high, it is still not known when it will decrease, thus people should not be too happy about it.
Nick Townsend, a researcher in nutritional and obesity epidemiology at the University of Oxford said that although it is possible that a leveling off in obesity prevalence in children may be happening, many common limitations are found between studies, leading to limited confidence in the reported findings.
"It is desirable that these are minimized so that a confident conclusion can be reached," Townsend said.
