In NYC 40% Of Schoolkids Overweight

(NewsCore) - Forty percent of NYC schoolkids from kindergarten through eighth grade -- 254,076 kids -- are either overweight or obese, according to 2008-2009 data gathered and analyzed by the city's department of education (DoE), the New York Post reported Sunday.

A whopping 22 percent had body mass indexes (BMI) high enough to be declared clinically obese, and another 18 percent were considered overweight, according to the figures.

But it was a scale of two cities. In some New York neighborhoods the problem was an epidemic, with close to half of the kids classified as fat, according to a new breakdown of the fattest and fittest ZIP codes provided to the Post by the city. In others, chunky children were a rarity.

This year, Corona, in Queens, N.Y., topped the scales with the heaviest kids. Fifty-one percent of the city schoolchildren living in ZIP code 11368 were either overweight or obese. Corona also had the highest number of clinically obese children -- 29 percent.

The thinnest kids live on New York's Upper West Side -- ZIP code 10069. There, 86 percent of kids were normal weight and 10 percent overweight. Less than one percent were obese, DoE figures showed.

The shocking disparity was not a surprise to New York pediatrician William Lee. The 10069 ZIP code has at least three high-end grocery stores and is close to Central Park -- and the median income is $88,000, double the $41,000 median earnings in Corona, N.Y., "If you have a place where you can exercise, it makes a huge difference," said Lee.

More than 70 of the city's 171 ZIP codes had overweight-obesity rates higher than 40 percent. Six neighborhoods -- East Harlem, Washington Heights, Inwood, Corona and Williamsburg and Bushwick in Brooklyn -- were over 45 percent last year and in 2007.

Read more: New York Post