The characteristics of the study population are presented in Table 1. Out of the 407 child
participants, 51.8% were males, and 5.4% were Hispanic. Out of the non-Hispanic children, 26% were
Black or African-American, 57.3% White, 10.1% Asian, and 1.2% American Indian or Hawaiian
Native. A total of 94 children (23.1%) were classified as overweight/obese and 313 (76.9%) as healthy
weight according to BMI percentiles. Median age was 42 months (25th percentile = 35, 75th
percentile = 47) and it did not differ by BMI percentile category. The 332 children (81.6%) who did
not have asthma or food allergy consisted of 253 healthy weight children and 79 overweight/obese
children; the 38 (9.3%) who had food allergy only consisted of 31 healthy weight and 7 overweight/obese;
the 30 (7.4%) who had asthma only consisted of 23 healthy weight and 7 overweight/obese; the 7
(1.7%) who had both asthma and food allergy consisted of 6 healthy weight and 1 overweight/obese.
A total of 89% of the parents were female, 69% married or cohabitating, 23% single, 94%
non-Hispanic, 13% completed high school, only 31% completed some years of college or technical
school, and 56% completed college or post-graduate work. As shown in Table 1, only the race of the
child, and parental education, and employment, differentiated the healthy weight from
overweight/obese children. Black or African-American children of employed and less educated parents
were more likely to be overweight/obese.