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Fri Apr 29, 2005 10:38 AM ET

LONDON (Reuters) - Obesity in children tripled between 1990 and 2002 in England, according to a government study Friday.

Junk food, low exercise levels and the popularity of computer games and television have raised obesity rates in developed countries to endemic proportions, experts say.

By 2002, 15.5 percent of 2 to 11-years-olds in England were considered obese, up from 5 percent in 1990, the Department of Health said.

Heather Wardle, a researcher at the National Center for Social Research, who headed the project, said the report highlighted the problem in England.

"It has become a serious public health concern," she said.

Researchers used the national Body Mass Index (BMI) to measure obesity, defined as weight in kilos divided by height in meters squared.

Wardle said index figures showing a child to be obese varied. A 2-year-old boy with a BMI of 19.1 would be obese, while a 6-year-old girl with a BMI of 18.1 would not.

Claire MacEvilly, a human nutrition researcher at the Medical Research Council, a government funded institute based in Cambridge -- which did not take part in the study -- said the results pointed to a worrying trend.

"Obesity levels in England are moving more toward those of the United States than Europe," she said.

In 2003, child obesity levels in the United States topped 17 percent.

English levels for 2003, the latest available figures, dropped to just under 14 percent.

But this drop was just a statistical blip, MacEvilly said.

"Unfortunately the trend will continue," she added. "It would be an achievement if the level just plateaued."

The most worrying aspect of the report, she said, was that children were more likely to become obese if their parents were also obese.

The study showed that in households where both parents were obese or overweight, nearly 20 percent of the children were also obese, compared with under 7 percent of children whose parents were not obese.

"Obesity is not just a one parent issue, it's continuing into the next generation and that's worrying," she said.

The report is available on http://www.dh.gov.uk/assetRoot/04/10/94/10/04109410.pdf