Drop in Underweight U.S. Children

Evidence that the billions of dollars spent by the federal government in nutrition programs (along with state programs, food banks, private charities and the work of anti-hunger professionals and volunteers) is working can be found in a couple of new reports on the percentage of underweight U.S. children, writes Cheryl Wetzstein in this editorial.
In the 1970s, research found that 5.1 percent of American children were underweight; a new report on underweight children and adolescents from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) shows the current rate has fallen to 3.3 percent.
The statistics don't mean "that there's not still hunger," notes NCHS researcher Cheryl Fryar. "We don't want to go that far." Children and teens are classified as underweight if they weigh less than the fifth percentile on federal growth charts, which are based on age, sex, body mass and height. The new percentage of underweight children means that 2.4 million between the ages of 2 and 19 are underweight. Malnutrition, lack of food, illness, and eating disorders can be the cause of underweight children, and in babies, failure to thrive can be the cause. Data in the report show a 3 percent drop in the percentage of underweight preschoolers (6 percent in the 1970s to less than 3 percent in the mid-2000s); elementary age children who are underweight dropped from 5 percent to less than 3 percent.
Another federal study - the Pediatric Nutrition Surveillance - mirrors these numbers for the percentage of very young, low-income children who are underweight, which went from 9 percent in the 1970s to 4.5 percent in 2008. These kinds of "low-profile" reports can often get lost in the media which scolds us about obesity and hunger, concludes the editorial.
Source: (Washington Times, July 21, 2009)http://http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jul/21/fewer-children-underweight444444444444444444444444/