Childhood obesity rates have levelled off since 2002

Ireland’s surging childhood obesity rates have reportedly ground to a halt since 2008, while adult levels have almost halved.

However, experts cannot say for definite if the drop was due to dietary cutbacks during the economic crisis.

Findings to be published in the open-access online journal BMC Public Health today show that, despite a threefold increase in childhood obesity rates from the 1970s to the early 2000s, between 2002 and 2012 the rates levelled off.