Layered over that are economic and cultural trends, including falling food prices, the increased marketing of junk food and the increasing time children spend watching TV and playing electronic games instead of exercising.
"If it's a true stop in the epidemic, then at the household level behaviors are changing," said Dr. Robert Whitaker, a professor of public health and pediatrics at Temple University in Philadelphia.
But Dr. Matthew Gillman, a pediatrician and childhood obesity expert at Harvard Medical School who was not involved in the study, expressed skepticism that a few years of public awareness could counter the myriad forces that have fattened America for decades.
"For every response to the obesity epidemic, I think we're still faced with things that are perpetuating it," Gillman said.
Still, the idea that childhood weights have simply topped out doesn't quite square either. Dietz said the fact that 60% of U.S. adults were either overweight or obese suggested that children had plenty of room to grow.
The plateau is encouraging, he said, but it could be decades before childhood obesity rates begin to fall.
He pointed to another public health scourge, cigarette smoking, to illustrate his point.
Per capita cigarette consumption in the United States leveled off in 1954 as the public became more aware of the dangers of smoking. But it took three decades and a series of taxes and regulations before the rate started declining.
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alan.zarembo@latimes.com
