Current anthropometric references, based on representative sampling, describe how children actually grow rather than what optimal growth should be. With childhood obesity increasing worldwide, weight distributions for most national populations are shifting to the right. The diagnosis of overweight is generally determined from statistical distributions that result from the sampling base, which leads to the paradoxical situation that children classified as obese by earlier references could be classified as non-obese on the basis of updated representative references.

The project will help support the costs of hosting three international meetings for a task force consisting of members of UNU, WHO, and invited child growth experts from other agencies and academic institutions. Other institutions contributing funds to this project include the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), through its National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention, and the Agricultural Research Service's Children's Nutrition Research Center in Houston, Texas.