[Recent prevalence of child and adolescent overweight and obesity in France and abroad]

Abstract

During the 2000s, surveillance of child overweight and obesity experienced a large expansion and provided an opportunity to document such a public health issue using standardized procedures in France and abroad. Nowadays, in France, it has been estimated that just less than one child out of five is overweight and among them, 3 to 4 % are obese. Like in other developed countries, these frequencies have reached a plateau during the 2000s and set France belonging to a group of countries in which the situation looks as fairly favorable. Nevertheless, they also hide huge disparities across social groups and the number of concerned children remains too high, while care possibilities are rather inconclusive. Therefore, prevention actions are still needed.