Childhood obesity

Steviana Collins

Professor Stauffer

English 1302

04/13/2021

Childhood obesity

Childhood obesity is when children have increased body weight, and their BMI is higher than the average child should have. This situation leads to concerns since every kid’s childhood period should always be healthy because it is upon which their future health and other factors are based upon. Therefore, it is essential to keep the children healthy even though it becomes difficult every day with the changing lifestyles. Thus herein, I will discuss obesity among children and how this has affected them, what remedies can be taken for it, what will happen if it is not resolved and how to avoid it.

Different factors cause childhood obesity. It is a cause for alarm, especially for most parents, since it is an issue that affects the parents and caregivers of children who are given the responsibility to feed them and ensure their health growing up. Therefore in the desire to keep the children healthy and avoid malnutrition, most of the parents find themselves giving their children the wrong food, and through this, obesity is developed. This can also be associated with what is called ”love" for the children. This happens when a parent does not want their child to do any work at home and, therefore, encourages them to rest and do what makes them happy.

In this accord, some of the significant causes of obesity among kids are low diet, less or no physical exercise, psychological stress, genetic predisposition, among other factors (Saeed, 2020). Low diet is one of the significant causes of obesity among children. This is very well brought out in different aspects in which the children become obese due to eating junk food. Junk food is food that contains a lot of calories, and it is one of the primary contributing factors towards obesity. (Olivieri, 2020). This is often administered by guardians or parents who want to have their children have a good life without the knowledge or otherwise those parents who are not financially capable of providing a healthy diet to their children.

Lack of physical exercise is also another issue that comes along with obesity. Lack of exercise makes the body very comfortable and reluctant to do any work. This makes the person grow as they continue to feed. It is one of the contemporary problems which need immediate checking and solution otherwise the level of obesity among the young kids will continue to rise. This practice can be discouraged by making young people walk or do physical exercises as frequently as possible. Another cause of obesity is psychological stress. This is whereby the young children are stressed about issues which happen around their life, and once this happens, they retreat to do things like overeating which makes them susceptible to obesity. Therefore the more they continue stressing, the more they continue to become obese, and their health gets affected. Genetic predisposition is also a common factor when it comes to obesity (Saeed, 2020). This is because it comes from the family line, and therefore it is not a lack of exercise or stress or overeating. This is always difficult to deal with, but still, it is possible to deal with it (Olivieri, 2020).

According to CDC, 18.5 % of children aged between 2 years to 19 years had obesity. This is still a very high number, and it needs to be dealt with. However, as the age of the children grows, obesity also increases. The children 2 to five years had a 13.9% obesity rate, 6 to 11 years was 18.4%, while 12 to 19 years had the highest obesity level, which was 20.06%. With these statistics, it is easy for us to get to how society is evolving.

Along with these statistics also comes the effects of obesity which are not always pleasant among many individuals. The results of obesity can be divided into physical, emotional, and psychological ones. The physical effects include diseases and low body image due to obesity. Another problem associated with obesity is the inability to participate in games or physical activity since most of the children with obesity become losers and might be mocked by others if they are the causes of failure in any physical activity they undertake together.

The emotional and psychological effects of obesity among children are the most widespread, and they are of great importance to know them. Some of these include; low-self-esteem, humiliation, emotional eating, body dissatisfaction, anxiety, and depression. Having excess weight most of the time is humiliating, and the children live with it. At the same time, they feel bad about themselves, which lowers their self-esteem and makes it difficult for them to fully understand what they are going through and how it can be solved. Most people do not like the children who have excess body weight as they say that they are not appealing and are therefore excluded from most of the things done as groups and beneficial to them to a great degree.

Apart from these effects of obesity, long-term results are terrible and affect the children into adulthood. This may cause severe damage as they experience complicated health issues like diabetes, cancer, and other health complications. Heart disease is also a common effect of obesity among individuals, which puts their lives at risk. Therefore it is essential to look for solutions early enough and prevent these adverse effects from taking place in the lives of the people who are obese. It, therefore, starts from childhood, whereby obesity is identified and solutions brought forward which have to be worked on.

Some of the robust solutions and ways to deal with obesity in children include; healthy eating, physical exercises, activities, a lot of water consumption, home activities like tilling a garden, or house chores. Through these exercises and activities, the health of the obese children I assured to be reasonable and, therefore, are more likely to perform better and their obesity levels to go down or even end entirely if they are serious about their health state. It also comes with the parents supporting them and giving them conditions that help them be less obese and exercise like the house chores and encouragement to exercise (González, 2021). Apart from this, the parents should also provide a healthy diet for their children to not suffer from obesity.

The above method of solving obesity problems comes with the realization that exercise is an essential part of our lives. Apart from exercising to lose weight, it is even better and right to exercise for just being healthy. Therefore, it means that even if a person is obese and is healthy and not at risk of health issues, they are right. Good food and water consumption also help us to be healthy and therefore this should be stressed and made sure that the children follow it.

In conclusion, we can say that obesity among children is an issue which needs to be looked into and resolved as soon as possible. The primary responsibility lies with the parents. It is essential to help the children be better by leading them with an example of what they should do like exercising and eating healthy, since what is consumed is what becomes of us. This also comes with the cost of healthy living, be it monetary or sacrifices the children have to make healthy (Hollinghurst, 2014).

References

González-González, C. S., Gómez del Río, N., Toledo-Delgado, P. A., & García-Peñalvo, F. J. (2021). Active Game-Based Solutions for the Treatment of Childhood Obesity. Sensors, 21(4), 1266.

Hollinghurst, S., Hunt, L. P., Banks, J., Sharp, D. J., & Shield, J. P. (2014). Cost and effectiveness of treatment options for childhood obesity. Pediatric obesity, 9(1), e26-e34.

Olivieri, C. (2020). Childhood Obesity, Health & Nutrition and Its Effects on Learning. Journal for Leadership and Instruction, 19(1), 31-37.

Saeed, S., Arslan, M., Manzoor, J., Din, S. M., Janjua, Q. M., Ayesha, H., … & Froguel, P. (2020). Genetic Causes of Severe Childhood Obesity: A Remarkably High Prevalence in an Inbred Population of Pakistan. Diabetes, 69(7), 1424-1438.