Causes of Childhood Obesity and How We Can Prevent It

Causes of Childhood Obesity and How We Can Prevent It

ENGL 135, Advanced Composition

DeVry University

Causes of Childhood Obesity and How We Can Prevent It

When I was a child, I have always been healthy and lean. My family always cooked healthy delicious foods that were made from natural food resources. We didn’t eat food with no nutritional value. We came from a line of cooks and have knowledge of proper nutrition. When I came to this country at the age of 10, I didn’t understand why people here are bigger than what I am used to. The person who became my best friend was about 150 pounds overweight at the age of 12. She was suffering from childhood obesity. Her parents had no nutritional knowledge and lacked the skills to say no to anything she wanted to eat since she was the only child. I often defended her from all the teasing and bullying due to her weight. This affected her health and psychologically. I didn’t want her do die from this and wanted to help her badly. When we were 13 years of age, I encouraged her to take nutrition, anatomy, and physiology classes that would help her understand how the human body needs and process nutrition. She took the classes and used the knowledge she learned to turn her health around and educated her parents. They are now living a healthy life.

Problem Analysis

        Childhood obesity is still a big problem in this country. The United States have a combined childhood obesity rate of approximately 25% from newborn to 19 years of age (Ogden, 2014). From the 1980’s to 2012, the rate of childhood obesity has almost tripled in children ages 6-11, and it has more than quadrupled in 12-19 year olds (CDC, 2014). It is because of these increasing rates that we need to quickly learn how to take control of this currently uncontrolled problem.

There is a difference between a healthy child that is slightly overweight, and an obese child. The CDC defines being overweight as, “having excess body weight for a particular height from fat, muscle, bone, water, or a combination of these factors” and obesity as, “having excess body fat” (CDC, 2014). Children that are slightly overweight have the possibility of growing into their weight because of their continuous growth, development, and living as adults of average weight. Unfortunately, that is not usually the case.

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Figure 1: National Initiative for Children's Healthcare Quality Child Policy Research Center, and Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative (Ed.).(2007). Childhood Obesity State Repot Cards.

Dr. Ludwig, an expert pediatric endocrinologist at the Boston Children’s Hospital, feels that if parents would change their household’s diet to a more natural one, and include more physical activities, childhood obesity will greatly vanish (Ludwig, 2010). In fact, many pediatricians feel that if parents would control their children’s nutritional intake it would not only decrease the amount of children that suffer from obesity, but it could potentially save their lives. Paul Franks is a doctor in nutrition and genetic epidemiology that lead a group of doctors in researching the effect of childhood obesity and its link to premature death. What the group found out was that obesity was one of the main factors that were, “…strongly associated with increased rates of premature death from endogenous causes” (Franks, 2010).

Solution

There are three ways parents and caregivers can help solve this problem. The first method is to simply stop serving children fast, and over processed prepackaged foods. The second way is to replace soda, and other sugary beverages with water. The third method is to limit television or video game times and integrate more fun physical activities. Following these three simple steps, parents will not only teach their children how to be healthy, it will also help everyone in the household become healthier.

The traditional family would sit down at approximately the same time every day at the dining room table, and enjoy each other’s company while eating a home cooked meal that consists of homemade array of meats, potatoes, vegetables, and sometimes a dessert. These days, between both parents working, after school activities, housework, parents do not have the time or energy to even try to prepare healthy nutritional meals. More parents are turning to fast food restaurants, or quick boxed meals that are already prepared to feed their families. In fact, one of the most common fast food items that are given to children is McDonald’s kids meal which includes chicken nuggets, French fries, and a small soda. Those four chicken nuggets contain 190 calories and 12 grams of fat, the small fries is an additional 230 calories, and 11 grams of fat (McDonalds, 2014). This means that for these two items, a small child would be ingesting 420 calories, and a massive 23 grams of fat. The American Heart Association (2015) shows that children between the ages of 2-3 should only be consuming 25-35% of their daily 1000 calorie intake from fats which amounts to approximately 38 grams. It is because of the consumption of these types of high calorie, and overly processed foods that childhood obesity continues to rise in this country.

To easily limit the extra calories due to excessive sugar intake, what parents and caregivers need to do is eliminate purchasing regular sodas, juice that contain high amount of sugars, and switch to drinking just plain water. The reason that this simple change works is because consuming sugary beverages increases caloric intake but it does not give the sense of feeling full, and that is why they are considered empty calories. In a small Hi-C Orange drink that is commonly found in a kid’s meal from McDonalds, contains a heart stopping 42 grams of sugar, and 190 calories (McDonalds, 2015). In fact, a blind study of 477 children was done over the course of 18 months and they found that, “Children in the sugar-free group who completed the study gained 35% less body fat than those in the sugar group, according to impedance measurements, and 19% less when fat mass was calculated from the sum of the thicknesses of four skinfolds” (de Ruyter et al, 2012). This study shows by simply changing from regular beverages that contains high amounts of sugar to sugar-free will help decrease the amount of weight, and unhealthy body fat that children will gain.

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Figure 2: Is an example of the American Heart Association (AHA) recommendations for daily intake amounts of 1000 calories, 38 grams of fat, and 17 grams of sugar vs. the one meal of 610 calories, 23 grams of fat, and 42 grams of sugar in a typical chicken nugget kid’s meal with small fries, and a small Hi-C orange drink.

Movement and exercise is essential for weight loss and weight maintenance even for children. In fact, the American Heart Association (2015) recommends that parents make sure that their children participate in at least 1 hour of vigorous physical activity a day. The activity can be 1 hour all at once or split up into two or three increments. The main objective is that parents need to remember is that the child should be breathing heavy during the exercise yet still able to hold a conversation. Some very fun, yet vigorous, exercises that children can do are; bike riding, swimming, playing a sport, jogging, skate boarding, and roller blading. These activities are made for the whole family to have fun together, or for independent times too.