Southland Children Gained Extra Weight During The Pandemic: Study

PASADENA, CA — Just like the adults around them, children gained excessive weight during the COVID- 19 pandemic too, a comprehensive study of Southern California children found.

A Kaiser Permanente study of nearly 200,000 Southland children released Monday found that children gained too much weight too, especially children between the ages of 5 and 11. Almost 10 percent of children between the ages of 5 and 11 fell into the range of obesity during the pandemic, according to the study. The study underlines the stress impact of the pandemic on children and the need to focus on physical activity as children return to school, according to the study's authors.

“We need to immediately begin to invest in monitoring the worsening obesity epidemic and develop diet and activity interventions to help children achieve and maintain a healthy weight,” said the senior author, Corinna Koebnick, PhD, of the Kaiser Permanente Southern California Department of Research & Evaluation.

“When we compared the weight gain among children from 2019 to 2020, we found that there was more weight gained during the pandemic for youths of all ages,” said Koebnick. “And, this weight gain fell disproportionally on the youngest children. On average, 5- to-11-year-olds gained 5 extra pounds, while 16- to-17-year-olds gained 2 extra pounds. The result was an almost 9% increase in the youngest children falling into the categories of being overweight and obese.”

For comparison, a American Psychological Association survey this year found that 42 percent of adults surveyed revealed that they gained extra weight during the pandemic, putting o an average of 29 pounds.

Among the study's findings:

• Youth age 5 to 11 years gained 5.07 pounds more during COVID-19 than during the same time period before COVID-19, while youth age 12 to 15 years and 16 to 17 years gained an excess of 5.1 pounds and 2.26 pounds over the prior year, respectively.
• Among 5-to-11-year-olds, this weight gain resulted in almost 9% more children becoming overweight or obese compared to 5% in youth ages 12 to 15 years and 3% in youth ages 16 to 17 years. Most of the increase among youths 5-11 and 12-15 years old was due to an increase in obesity.

To determine the children's weight gains, researchers used electronic health records of 191,509 members of Kaiser Permanente in Southern California from March 1, 2019, to January 31, 2021. The study found an increase of body weight and prevalence of obesity in children 5 to 11 years old during the course of the pandemic.

The study results were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

"As children go back to school it will be important to focus on health and physical activity to help children not carry unwanted extra weight into adulthood," added Koebnick.