Did Michelle Cause Child Obesity Rates To Drop 43%?

Recently a few of my friends have been triumphantly claiming that early childhood obesity rates have dropped by 43%, and they are crediting Michelle Obama's activism for the drop. Here's a meme to show what I'm talking about.


I try to caution people about using statistics... unless you're very careful, you'll make a mistake and it'll bite you in the foot. I decided to analyze this claim, so I started searching for the source of the 43% figure. As it turns out, in February of 2014, the CDC published a paper that made the startling claim. That study found that early childhood obesity rates (preschool, ages 2-5) had dropped 43% over the course of a decade (2003-2012). It also found that overall (ages 2-19) obesity rates had stayed flat over the same time period.

The study, however, reached no conclusions as to why the drop occurred, though theories abound. One theory does credit Michelle's efforts, but there are many others. Personally, I would suspect Michelle's efforts only had a contributing effect, at best, because she didn't become first lady until 2009, six years into the study period. Crediting her for the entire decline seems... political.

So, it appears as if the meme is correct, and I was wrong in thinking otherwise, right? Not so fast. Remember that this CDC report was issued in February of 2014. As it turns out, the CDC report had some problems. For example, the ten-year period they looked at began in 2003, and early childhood obesity rates spiked abnormally high in that year. Because of that, the decline in rates was artificial. A different study, using the same source of data for obesity rates and published in the medical journal JAMA Pediatrics in April 2014, found that overall childhood obesity rates had actually INCREASED over the 14 year period from 1999-2012.

Overall, obesity rates increased from 14.5 percent in the 1999-2000 survey to 17.3 percent in 2011-2012. There was also a marked increase in the rate of severe obesity over the study period, the researchers found. Among preschoolers age 2 to 5, the rate was slightly lower, but that could have been due to chance.

"Even though we don't see huge increases in the rates of children who are overweight or obese, there are clearly more in the categories that are severely obese," Skinner said.

So, the numbers haven't been disproven, but doubt has been cast on whether the decline is real or an artifact of the abnormal spike in 2003.

For me, at this point, I would be extremely hesitant to crow victory and vindication for Michelle, as this particular meme does. Both studies included cautions that, while these results could be the beginning of a trend, they could also be just a statistical blip, and more time is needed to determine the truth. Also, any possible drop in early childhood obesity rates did NOT reduce obesity rates for older children, as you'd expect if any lasting changes were, in fact, realized. Finally, as Michelle's efforts on early childhood obesity began with the Let's Move campaign in 2010, comprising less than three years of effort in the study period, it stretches credulity that those efforts drove any changes that might have occurred.

So I'd hold off on these "Mission Accomplished" moments, if I were you. The data isn't nearly as conclusive as you might like it to be.



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