Majority Of American Kids Will Be Obese By Age 35, Research Says

The obesity issue among citizens in the United States appears to have potentially worsened as a new study suggests Friday that most American children will be highly overweight by 35 years old. Published in the New England Journal of Medicine, a research team from Harvard University reported that nearly 57 percent of kids today will be affected by this after testing its predictions through a simulation of growth trajectories.

Childhood obesity is fairly common, with more than 3 million cases reported annually in the U.S. It has managed to become a major health problem that is well-documented on, but previous research hasn't examined how today's children would be affected by extreme weight gain in their adult years.

"Although the current obesity epidemic has been well documented in children and adults, less is known about long-term risks of adult obesity for a given child at his or her present age and weight," the study reads. "We developed a simulation model to estimate the risk of adult obesity at the age of 35 years for the current population of children in the United States."

The Harvard researchers accumulated height and weight data from five different studies that were representative of Americans. The team then developed 1000 virtual populations that examined 1 million children through the age of 19 years old, which were all representative of the U.S. population in 2016. Trajectories on the children's height and weight were then predicted to obtain the study's results.

The study's results determined that nearly half of the kids that may experience obesity as an adult will first see it during childhood. The research also showed that the risk of adult obesity increased with age, with overweight two-year-olds having a body mass index (BMI) of 1.17 and 19-year-old children earning 3.10.

"It should not be surprising that we are heading in this direction," Zachary Ward, the study's lead author, said in a statement Friday to CBS News. "We are already approaching this level of adult obesity for certain subgroups [and] areas of the country."

Obesity can emerge from a variety of areas. Genetics, overeating, physical inactivity and social issues are listed as causes for the chronic condition. This health epidemic is also associated with numerous implications including Type 2 diabetes and cancer, among others.

Being overweight or obese is a problem that currently faces 70.7 percent of adults that are 20 years old and over, according to a 2013-2014 statistic from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).