Long-term trends in body mass index of children in Jena, Eastern Germany

The decline in BMI among Japanese women after World War II

“…Vignerová et al (2007), working with population-representative data on Czech children and adolescents from 1951 to 2001, find that the median BMI of females in their late teens significantly decreased, whereas that of their male coevals remained almost constant. Although this pair of trends is similar to trends in Japan, the significance of this similarity is unclear, since the two countries' paths have been radically different, Czechoslovakia having been under Communist rule from 1948to 1989 As for children, a number of studies have examined both the longterm height trend (Vignerová et al, 2006;Bielecki et al, 2012;Nú ñ ez and Pé rez, 2015) and the height and weight trends (Zellner et al, 2007;Johnson et (1947)(1948)(1949)(1950)(1951)(1952)(1953)(1954)(1955) are indispensable for tracing the declining BMI trend back to its origin. Funatogawa et al (2009) also analyze BMI trends of Japanese adults, but they do not draw on NNS data prior to 1956 5 .…”

Unexpected plateauing of childhood obesity rates in developed countries

“…There are only a few datasets describing the cross-sectional development of BMI values in children over several decades before 1980. These data show a rather stable or slowly increasing prevalence of childhood obesity [12-15]. However, between 1980 and 2000, mean BMI values in children and the rates of childhood overweight and obesity increased dramatically in many countries [1].…”

Unexpected Plateauing of Childhood Obesity Rates in Developed Countries

“…There are only a few datasets describing the cross-sectional development of BMI values in children over several decades before 1980. These data show a rather stable or slowly increasing prevalence of childhood obesity [12][13][14][15]. However, between 1980 and 2000, mean BMI values in children and the rates of childhood overweight and obesity increased dramatically in many countries [1].…”

“…If this can be confirmed in further analyses, such The marked increase in BMI SDS after 1985 was associated with a substantial increase in prevalence rate of obesity [22], and is a result of the dramatic changes in living conditions due to the German reunification. (B): Development and association of BMI and energy intake of Jena school children (7 to 14 years of age) between 1880 and 2005 (reproduced with permission from Zellner et al [15]). The figure shows that BMI values as a surrogate of body fat mass paralleled the changes in energy intake over a time period of 100 years.…”