The nation’s childhood obesity problem prompts the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to change its BMI growth charts for kids.

Updated growth charts released Thursday by the government now extend to a body mass index of 60 — up from previous charts that stopped at a BMI of 37, with additional categories to track obesity in kids ages 2 to 19.

In recent decades, severe obesity among children in America has nearly quadrupled, experts said.

The old charts had been used since 2000. They were based on data from U.S. surveys conducted from 1963 to 1994, when far fewer children were obese, let alone severely obese, said Cynthia Ogden, a CDC epidemiologist.

Today, about 4.5 million children — about 6% — fall into that category.

In the U.S., the prevalence of obesity and severe obesity has increased since 1980, and in 2017-2018 more than 4.5 million children and adolescents were considered severely obese.

The 2000 CDC BMI-for-age growth charts, based on data from 1963-1980 for most children, do not extend beyond the 97th percentile. So, CDC officials developed new percentiles to monitor very high BMI values.

These extended percentiles are based on data for children and adolescents with obesity – including from 1988-2016 – thus increasing the data available in the reference population.

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