At a time of growing concern over childhood obesity, a new report shows kids get 12% of their calories from fast-food restaurants.
A third of kids eat fast food on any given day, according to the report made public Wednesday by the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The report found that children eat the equivalent of a small hamburger — such as the kind found in a McDonald's Happy Meal — every day, said Kristi King, a senior clinical dietitian with Texas Children's Hospital in Houston, who wasn't involved in the new study.
Sandra Hassink, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, credits savvy marketing, such as advertising the food with cartoon characters and including toys with meals.
Teens are more likely than smaller children to consume fast food, the report said. Adolescents ages 12 to 19 years old got 17% of their calories from fast food in 2010-2011, compared with 9% of children ages 2 to 11 years old, the report found. Adults got about 11% of their calories from fast food from 2007-2010, according to a CDC report in 2013.
Children who eat a lot of fast food tend to consume more calories but have a nutritionally poorer diet, compared with other kids, the report said.
The obesity rate in children has more than doubled in the past 30 years, rising from 7% in 1980 to nearly 18% in 2012. The obesity rate among adolescents more than quadrupled, growing from 5% to nearly 21% over the same period, according to the CDC.
A growing number of children develop diseases once seen only in middle-aged people, such as high blood pressure, liver disease and type 2 diabetes, Hassink said.
Hassink said parents should remember that daily choices about food can contribute to long-term chronic disease. "Health doesn't happen by accident," she said.
