The topic I am going to talk about is childhood obesity, which I think will also be my emphasis in the future. During the past two decades, the prevalence of obesity in children has risen greatly worldwide. Obesity in childhood causes a wide range of serious complications, and increases the risk of premature illness and death later in life, raising public-health concerns. Results of research have provided new insights into the physiological basis of bodyweight regulation. However, treatment for childhood obesity remains largely ineffective. In view of its rapid development in genetically stable populations, the childhood obesity epidemic can be primarily attributed to adverse environmental factors for which straightforward, if politically difficult, solutions exist (Cara B 2002).
The impacts on childhood obesity are way more serious that they look like. As we all know that children are the cores of a family, how we prepare the food, what kind of food children may like, what time they should eat meals those are all the concerns of a housewife or a family charger, those are the main concerns. In other words, children could somehow affect the eating and meals habits of a big family, no matter a better habit or a worse habit. However, childhood obesity has reached epidemic levels in developed countries. Twenty five percent of children in the US are overweight and 11% are obese.
Moreover, overweight and obesity in childhood are known to have significant impact on both physical and psychological health. Environmental factors, lifestyle preferences, and cultural environment play pivotal roles in the rising prevalence of obesity worldwide. In general, overweight and obesity are assumed to be the results of an increase in caloric and fat intake. On the other hand, there are supporting evidence that excessive sugar intake by soft drink, increased portion size, and steady decline in physical activity have been playing major roles in the rising rates of obesity all around the world. Consequently, both over-consumption of calories and reduced physical activity are involved in childhood obesity. Technology development seems like draggled a little bit of physical activity of people in the current society. People would spend more time on cell phone App or just sitting in front of the computer. More and more parents are very generous and open to children and let them have a cell phone at a very young age. This could lead to a very low physical activity at this young age. Also, snacks and soda—the high fat and calories food, those are children’s favorite. I can imagine that sitting in front of computer and eating all the snacks could be the best thing in their heads. At least to me, all I know is that I was dying to eat junk food everyday and I think fried food is the best thing I had ever eaten! Children have bad control on themselves and also don’t have that much knowledge about the badness of being obesity. So parents are playing a really important role in preventing children’s obesity.
Cara B Ebbeling, Childhood obesity: public-health crisis, common sense cure, science direct journal, 2002;360;473-482