A new study conducted in California found that 7 percent of boys and five percent of girls are "extremely obese" — weighing double what doctors say the average child their age should weigh.

From WebMD Health News via MedicineNet.com:

Extreme obesity has reached ''alarming'' levels among children, according to a new study that looked at the weights and heights of more than 710,000 children aged 2 to 19.

''The prevalence of extreme obesity was much higher than we thought," says the study's lead author, Corinna Koebnick, PhD, a research scientist at Kaiser Permanente in Southern California, a large prepaid health plan.

...''This is a serious health issue,'' Koebnick says. ''These children are very likely to continue to be obese adults and face all the health consequences that come with obesity at a very early age.'' That includes heart disease and diabetes, among other ailments, she says.

Also on MedicineNet: 'Gaming' Sends Boys' Test Scores Sliding

New research shows that young boys who own a video game system don't do as well academically as their non-playing peers, suggesting that time spent playing video games is supplanting time spent on homework.

Study author Robert Weis, an associate professor of psychology at Denison University in Ohio, said that "we can never say with 100 percent certainty that it's playing video games that causes kids to have delays or deficits in reading and writing performance, but ... we can be pretty confident that it's the game ownership and the amount of time they spend playing that causes these academic delays."

Jen Eyer is on the Community Team at AnnArbor.com. She oversees the Parenting and Home & Garden sections, and writes feature stories, blog posts and opinion pieces. She can be reached at 734-623-2577 or jeneyer@annarbor.com.