While the extent of obesity among kids overall seems to have peaked, it’s still climbing among African American and Native American girls, new research from California shows.

And the biggest obesity increases over the past decade have occurred among the heaviest youths, no matter what their gender or ethnicity, Dr. Kristine Madsen of the University of California, San Francisco, and her colleagues found. “Our heaviest kids are getting heavier,” Madsen said in an interview.

Recent national data suggest that the percentage of children who are obese has plateaued, “representing the first sign of abatement in the pediatric obesity epidemic,” Madsen and her team note in the September issue of Pediatrics. But that same data, covering 1999 through 2008, also show Hispanic and black children were more likely to be obese than non-Hispanic whites. [Read more...]