Over the past five years, New York City has gone to great lengths to improve the nutrition and fitness of its youngest residents in an effort to curb childhood obesity.
According to a new report from the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, these efforts have paid off. The percent of students from kindergarten through eighth grade who are classified as obese has dropped from 21.9 percent to 20.7 percent, ABC News reports.
This decline is the largest reduction in pediatric obesity recently, as documented in a large city, officials from the department noted.
The city has embarked on a number of health-conscious changes in the past half-decade, including banning the use of trans fats in restaurants and a number of programs and initiatives at child care centers and
schools including increasing
outdoor play and use of
playground equipment.
"These measures included establishment of regulations to require improved nutrition, increased physical activity time, and limited screen time ... in group child care, provision of extensive nutrition education training and physical activity equipment to 80 percent of group child care centers, and provision of on-site nutrition education workers at 300 centers," the authors of the report wrote, according to the news source.