Childhood Obesity

Childhood obesity is becoming an alarmingly common phenomenon in our society nowadays. The percent of obese children in our society has greatly increased in past years, and, somewhat as a result, both obese adults and diseases associated with childhood obesity have increased as well. Thus, it is more vitally important than ever that parents of obese children, or of children they simply want to direct into a healthy lifestyle, take into account a number of different factors and practice good parenting techniques in order to encourage their children away from the habits that will lead to childhood obesity and toward a healthy, happy lifestyle.

1. Set a good example

Children, of course, learn habits by watching their parents. Similarly, obese children often learn their habits from watching their parents engage in activities that are conducive to becoming obese. Even parents who are not obese may have obese children. For instance, if the parent is active only outside of the home (such as at a gym), but lives a fairly sedentary life at home, make sure to represent to the child that there is activity so that the child knows that a healthy lifestyle involves a variety of habits, which will help prevent childhood obesity. Similarly, obese children who see their parents eating poorly may continue to do so, while obese children who see their parents eating healthy food will want to tailor their diets to fit their parents.

2. Teach good diet habits

Having a healthy diet is vital to raising children who are healthy. To prevent childhood obesity, children must not only practice good diet habits but also understand them. Parents of obese children should work on keeping unhealthy foods out of the house, but also teach the child what a good diet would entail so as to prevent the child from simply purchasing unhealthy food while away from the home. Likewise, parents of healthy children should not only practice a healthy diet, but teach their children healthy habits so that when the child eventually is left to his or her own devices, he or she will not revert to unhealthy practices. In particular, stress the important of avoiding sugar drinks and salty snacks to obese children to steer them away from childhood obesity. Furthermore, give your child fruits and vegetables as snacks rather than prepackaged snacks that are highly unhealthy, which can greatly help your child stay away from childhood obesity.

3. Encourage the child to have active activities

Even if your child is initially resistant, encourage the child to have healthy activities. Take your child out hiking or suggest activities so that the child will be active, perhaps with friends. Enforcing that the child play a sport can be helpful, but it is certainly not the only way to avoid childhood obesity. Obese children can be greatly helped into reducing weight by regular activity, or by choosing activities that require motion over activities such as video games that encourage a sedentary lifestyle. Having active activities can be one of the greatest ways to avoid obese children.

Childhood Obesity

Every reputable medical source in our nation has shown drastic rises in childhood obesity in the past several decades as a result of a number of factors. It is important to know the number of obese children in our country so as to be able to track our progress toward a thinner country and to see if our tactics are working, but it is far more important to use these childhood obesity statistics to make a plan and motivate the nation to committing itself to a thinner future. Clearly childhood obesity is prevalent problem, and only by a head-on confrontation of this problem can we hope to conquer this problem.

1. How many children?

According to one section of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), overweight or obese children comprise 16% of children between 6 and 19 years old. The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), a subsidiary of the CDC, meanwhile estimated childhood obesity to be approximately 18.8% for children between the ages of 6 and 11 in 2004, while 17.4% of 12 to 19 year olds are considered obese children. The numbers of obese children have doubled in the past twenty years, tripled over the past thirty, and more than quadrupled over the past forty years. Furthermore, childhood obesity is not a phase. The NHANES estimates that more than 80% of overweight or obese children will become overweight or obese adults, while 25% of obese adults were overweight as children.

2. Causes

Levels of childhood obesity are far higher than they ever have been in our country. Reasons for why have varied greatly over subjects, but a number of factors point to technology in a number of areas. For one, computers and video games give the option of having hobbies that are sedentary, which has been shown to be a great factor in childhood obesity. Also, obese children are known to consume far more sugary and salty snacks than their thinner counterparts. Furthermore, the rising levels of adult obesity in this nation have set poor examples for children who will follow the lead that will eventually take them down the road to childhood obesity.

3. Consequences

It is well documented by NHANES that obese children are at a far higher risk for plenty of diseases than their thinner counterparts. Obese children generally have a higher risk for having cardiovascular disease including high blood pressure, abnormal glucose tolerance, or high cholesterol levels. Though it’s less common than these cardiovascular diseases, obese children also are more likely to have asthma, hepatic steatosis (which causes liver problems), sleep apnea, and type 2 diabetes. Of course, in addition, obese children are at a higher risk of being obese adults, which will lead to all sorts of other complications so that childhood obesity can be a gateway to plenty of adult obesity related problems.