Childhood Obesity: Causes and Treatments

Back few decades, the question of childhood obesity was not an issue to be argued. Our grandparents and parents never inquired the weight of their children at school age, their children, school fellows or any other child they came into contact with. Their children ate healthy foods from the table and played the whole day outside. The matter of childhood weight has altered enough since that time. With the coming of fast foods, play station and Xbox games, our kids live inactive lives and as a result, have become very obese. The epidemic of childhood obesity is quickly growing throughout U.S. In just two decades, the frequency of overweight United States children ages 6 to 11 has doubled up. Obesity has been related to several disorders and conditions in adolescences, such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer. On the whole, about 25 million United State children and adults are obese or nearly obese. This discovering is very distressing to many Americans and has instigated many debates on how to control the rising sizes of our youngsters.
The objective of this paper is to investigate the obesity issue in the children in the age they are attending their schools levels.
Childhood obesity, you hear about it far and wide. There are advertisements about it on electronic media. It’s a very famous issue on mainstream talk shows; even Oprah has an episode about it at least once each term. We all know at least one obese child, and unhappily that rate is rising all the time. Obesity is described as an extreme accumulation of fat that raises body weight by twenty percent or more over ones ideal body weight. Childhood obesity can be instigating by physiological, emotional and familial factors. There is, nevertheless a small ratio of genetic features that can also cause childhood obesity such as problems of the thyroid. While, the main cause of obesity is simply the fact that children eat too much and don’t exercise enough. (Okie, 2006)

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Many factors, generally working together, raise a child’s risk of being obese. Eating a large amount of high calorie foods, like baked goods, and vending machine snacks and fast foods surely contributes to weight increase. When purchasing foodstuff, the parents should concentrate on purchasing more vegetables and fresh fruits and stay away from the convenience foods that are high in sugar and fat. Healthy food and drink should always be available and food should never be used as an incentive or a penalty. Children should not be given sweets as a incentive for eating a meal, because this teaches them to place a higher value on desserts and may make desserts more attractive to them rather than the healthy foods.
Having an inactive way of living is one more factor that causes to weight gain. Figures show that kids spend at least six and a half hours a day with some type of media, such as playing video games, chatting on the internet and watching television. Children require having at least 1 hour of physical exercise each day and cutting down the media to about two hours a day. The simple way to get children to exercise is to just get them to play games that will keep them physically active like hide and seek. Kids need to be kept active not only to sustain their weight, but also to support healthy bone and muscle growth.
Childhood obesity influences the child psychologically as well. Overweight children tend to have lower self respect and therefore pick on other overweight children to compensate for it. They also have the trend to have more nervousness and have poor social expertise as well. In some cases, their overweight can affect their functioning at school and their nervousness may cause some to want to perform out in class, while others become more socially aloof.
Children need to be supported to lose weight and maintain a healthy way of living. They should be reminded that their lives do mean something and that there’s still punishment of time to make a change in their lives for the better. The earlier they are capable to understand this, the more leaning they are to want to make a change. Parents and caretakers need to be extra helpful particularly at the point where the child is beginning to make small changes at a time.
Causes
The increase in childhood obesity has many reasons. The main reason of obesity is surely children in school age is eating too much and/or not performing usual physical activities at homes or schools or being inactive. The additional calories that are not capable to burn up through physical activities or exercise will translate into fat, and when this fat becomes excessive and more, one will become overweight. This significance results in weight gain and will vary from kids to kids that was due to few factors such as health issues, physical inactivity, genes as well as psychological problems also reason to weight gain and may be what the causes of obesity are. Even though the main reason of obesity is underlying disorders, however, it is also intimately related to people way of living as well.
In the pass, kids like to play sports more frequently, enjoy external activities as forms of entertainment and walk to school. But in these days, children are totally reverse from the past. The sports our children like to do these days are playing computer games, surfing internet, chatting, watching television and any game they select while exercising only their mind, head and hands only. When you combine the poor selections in food and the lack of exercising, there is a high chance that childhood obesity will finish up lead to disorder.
Genetics and DNA have been found to be a contributing part in the causes of childhood obesity. Unluckily, some kids are unsurprisingly predisposed to obesity. The environment too performs a role in the reason of obesity. The family home is a significant place to learn about proper nutrition and enough exercise. Habits, Attitude and beliefs about food choices and how to spend family leisure time are crucial factors to forming a healthy relation with food. Kids spend a lot of time in school, their food selections at school become significant and it was influenced by the school eating environment. Contemporary way of living has enhanced our quality of life but also contribute very much too physical inactivity. Cars are utilized for short trips, and the number of walking trips the average American children takes each year have reduced. Nowadays only about 10 percent of public school students walk to school evaluated to the large no of student a generation ago.
Treatment
Treatment and deterrence of childhood obesity is a constant effort on a lot of unlike parts. According to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academics (IMNA), the meaning of deterrence is “With regard to obesity, primary prevention represents evading the happening of obesity in a population; secondary deterrence represents early finding of obesity through screening with the reason of restraining its occurrence; and tertiary deterrence engages preventing the sequel of obesity in childhood and adulthood.” Such as parents who perform a role in treating and stopping childhood obesity. Schools can perform a role in the treatment and prevention of childhood obesity. Government management can also perform a role in treatment and deterrence of childhood obesity.
Parents can perform a significant role, because the children depend on the parents for daily feeding and constant activities. Some parents who have busy timetable and cannot afford to spend the time on cooking nourishing foods for either breakfast, lunch, or dinner generally just give the children fast food to eat. And when the children are at home the parents generally don’t spend time doing out-of-doors activities with their children.
In order to control obesity in children at school level Healthy People 2010 presents an inclusive, national health support and disease prevention program. It is designed to serve as a roadmap for increasing the health of all people in the U.S. during the 1st decade of the 21st century. Like the previous Healthy People 2000 initiative—which was driven by an ambitious, yet attainable, 10-year policy for improving the Nation’s health by the end of the 20th century— Healthy People 2010 is committed to a single, overarching purpose: promoting health and stopping sickness aroused by obesity. Healthy People 2010 focus to increase the health and well-being of all children by stopping childhood obesity and addressing the unique physical, psychological, behavioral, and socioeconomic features that affect children’s health. Take care not to isolate or ostracize obese children, and highlight the significance of healthy habits over cosmetic appearance.
Healthy people 2010 present that obesity and other chronic conditions continue to present a serious obstacle to public health. Violence and abusive behavior continue to ravage homes and communities across the country. Mental disorders continue to go undiagnosed and untreated. Obesity in adults has increased 50 percent over the past two decades. It also provides that nearly 40 percent of adults engage in no leisure time physical activity.
Healthy people 2010 emphasize schools to perform a main role in the treatment and deterrence of obesity in children. Because children are expending a lot more time in school than at home doing after school courses or children are in daycare. Children spend a lot of money in cold drink and snack machines in schools. According to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academics states that, “All food and cold drink sold or served to students in school should be healthy and meet an accepted dietary content standard. Nevertheless, many of the competitive foodstuffs now sold in school canteens, selling machines, school fundraisers and school stores are normally high in calories and low in nutritional value. At present, only minimal federal standards exist for the sale of competitive foodstuff in schools.
Schools want to propose more physical education in the children’s set of courses according to Healthy People 2010. If schools offer more physical activity in the set of courses and give a better option in lunch menus, then children would be more energetic in the activities that they do. Healthy People 2010 gives that there are some key particulars that schools can follow to assist children give healthy eating behaviors and regular physical activity: Develop and implement dietary standards for all competitive foodstuffs and drinks sold or served in schools; Make sure that all school foods meet the Nutritional Guidelines for Americans; make sure that all children and youth contribute in a minimum of half hour of moderate to energetic physical activity during the school time, containing extended opportunities for physical activity through classes; Improve school health curricula and the use of school health services for obesity deterrence efforts; make sure that schools are as advertising-free as possible; Conduct yearly evaluation of students’ height, weight and body mass index and make that information available to parents; Assess school strategies and practices connected to nutrition, exercise, obesity deterrence.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Healthy people give that our children for the future are being failed. Healthy living needs to be taken critically. Increasingly households have both parents working full-time jobs to provide shelter, food, and clothing for their families. Providing the basic requirements is not sufficient for a healthy family. Parents need to become more concerned in their child’s life. The health concerns of the youth today are instant and warrant urgent preventative actions. Preventing childhood obesity is a combined liability requiring individual, community, corporate, family and governmental commitments. The key will be to implement changes from many ways and at numerous levels, and through teamwork with and between many sectors. A more optimistic role by our nation’s parents should be taken to lead our children to a healthier future.
References
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Ellyn Satter. (2005). Your Child’s Weight: Helping without Harming. Florida: Kelcy Press.
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Frances M. Berg. (2003). Underage and Overweight: America’s Childhood Obesity Epidemic. Chicago: Hatherleigh Press.
Denise Alexander, et.al. (2008). Challenges and Findings in Measuring the Behavioral Determinants of Obesity in Children in Europe. New York: Springer.
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