Record Childhood Obesity Spurs MAHA To Reform Juvenile Nutrition

America is getting fatter and this is increasing our health care costs.  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reported that childhood and teen obesity rates in the U.S. have reached record highs in recent years.  A report from National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) found that 40.3% of adults older than age 20 are obese, which includes 9.7% who are severely obesity and another 31.7% who are overweight.

This has not escaped the attention of our ripped HHS Secretary and his MAHA movement:

https://thehill.com/homenews/education/5769170-childhood-obesity-maha-rfk-jr-cdc-fda-glp-1s/

Childhood obesity at a record high as MAHA presses for changes to kids’ diets
By Lexi Lonas Cochran - March 8, 2026

New data showed childhood obesity has hit a record high in recent years, while federal changes such as cuts to food assistance programs and a revamped food pyramid reignite debates over how to handle the issue.

A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report late last month showed more than 1 in 5 U.S. children and teenagers were obese between 2021 to 2023, compared to only 5.2 percent between 1971-1974. The number of children with severe obesity in recent years has hit 7 percent.

School meals, physical activity and weight loss drugs have all become talking points in the problem, which is a major issue in the “Make America Healthy Again” movement associated with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Experts point to school meals and increased activity as key ways to address childhood obesity, with research showing school meals are the healthiest eating options some students have all day.

“They’re noting that this increase in obesity occurred during COVID-19 and that jump in childhood obesity happened during the years when millions of kids lost access to reliable school meals. So, when schools closed for virtual learning, children lost a critical source of daily nutrition,” said Erin Hysom, senior child nutrition policy analyst on the Child Nutrition Programs and Policy team for the Food Research & Action Center.

“I think that the data underscores … the important role in healthy school meals for all, the important role in the National School Lunch Program and the School Breakfast Program in supporting children’s health and well being,” Hysom added.

Only nine states currently offer free breakfast and lunch to all public school students, but others have been looking to expand their programs.

The importance of school meals has been recognized by the Trump administration, with Kennedy releasing an upside food pyramid earlier this year that could affect how food looks for students in the future.

“As noted in the MAHA Strategy, more than 60 percent of children’s daily calories come from highly processed foods, a pattern linked to higher rates of obesity, diabetes and other chronic conditions. Addressing childhood obesity is a priority for the Administration as part of its broader effort to improve the nation’s health and reduce diet-related chronic disease. Expanding access to nutritious foods and promoting healthy lifestyles for children are central to that work,” a spokesperson for HHS said in a statement to The Hill.

“The Dietary Guidelines issued under Secretary Kennedy emphasize whole, minimally processed foods. These Guidelines inform dozens of federal nutrition programs, including school meal programs,” the spokesperson added.

The new food pyramid shows vegetables, fruits, proteins, dairy and healthy fats at the top and whole grains at the bottom. While the pyramid caused some stir in the health community over its friendliness toward meat and fat, there was agreement over its emphasis in eliminating ultra-processed foods.

But it could be years before the changes actually work their way down to school lunch lines.

“We know that school meals are one of the healthiest sources of meals, and there’s been increased attention about: Are there ways to reduce some of the processed meals available in schools? And this, I think, is can be an incredible opportunity to help address some of the obesity as well, so long as we’re making those investments in schools,” said Juliana Cohen, professor of health sciences and nutrition at Merrimack College and principal investor at NOURISH Lab.

“Because to be able to provide the healthier school meals, we really need to make sure that we have adequately trained and paid staff. They need to have access to the highest quality foods available, have the equipment and the infrastructure for more scratch cooking,” she added.

The Trump administration is also approving requests from 18 states to take junk food and sodas off of food assistance programs.

Kennedy, meanwhile, announced this week that multiple top medical schools have agreed to require that all their students go through 40 hours of nutrition education, starting in the fall of 2026.

This will “reshape the way that we train doctors in our country and deliver on President Trump’s promise and the chronic disease epidemic in America,” Kennedy said Thursday, adding “more than 30,000 physicians each year will now graduate equipped with nutrition education to help prevent and reverse chronic disease. This is how we implement the MAHA agenda.”

Getting children enough exercise is another big part of the problem. Only 10 states currently have laws on the books with strong recess mandates at schools, with no federal mandate on the books.

“Over the past several decades, many of those physical activity opportunities that a lot of us kind of take for granted that we had in schools, like recess and opportunities for physical education and just general movement throughout the day, have been taken away and replaced by a focus on standardized tests,” said Erin Hager, professor at the Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

“And so, I think what we really need is an increase in opportunities for kids to be physically active during the school day, including recess for all kids, including middle school and maybe even high school, and incorporating other ways that we can get kids moving throughout the school day,” she added.

And under the surface of the food and exercise discussions is the medical debate on weight loss drugs for children, which has accelerated since the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved GLP-1s for use with Americans as young as 12.

There are currently four medications approved to treat obesity for those ages 12 to 17: Wegovy, Saxenda, Orlistat and Qsymia.

The CDC found in 2023, the year new weight loss drugs for adolescents came on the market, there was a 300 percent spike in obesity medication prescriptions for 12 to 17 year olds. While that increase is high, it still only represents 0.5 percent of children in this age group with obesity receiving medications for it.

A study that came out in 2024 showed Saxenda helped lower the body mass index in those ages 6 to 12, fueling debate to how young these drugs should be offered.

“I think that prevention is a high priority, and there are things that pediatric primary care providers can give guidance to families, even in infancy and toddlerhood and early childhood, they can establish healthy habits that can help to prevent childhood obesity,” said Matthew Haemer, chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Section on Obesity.

“Thinking about the tools that the health care system has available, there’s individualized counseling by primary care providers that can be supplemented with behavioral interventions that have a strong evidence of being able to treat childhood obesity. And for those children — especially those children with the most severe obesity and those children that are already suffering from health conditions related to their obesity — FDA-approved medications can be a helpful tool in the toolbox to help improve their health and quality of life,” Haemer added.

Updated March 10 at 9:33 a.m. EDT