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Do you think it’s normal to be big?
According to National health surveys, for the last four decades the number of obese children has tripled from 4.6% to 15.5% (
Most Americans consider that increase of children’s obesity is the result of eating unhealthy food. Today, fast food is very popular, especially among youngsters. Due to intensive advertising through television commercial campaigns, they are more and more hooked on cheap, tasteful, and filling junk food. According to Indianapolis News, each year children watch fast food advertisement tens of thousands of times (“Staying Healthy”). Numerous TV commercials are very efficient and influence children to consume unhealthy food. Because most fast food is high-calorie and includes some not desirable food additives, it is very harmful for children who frequently eat it and can lead to obesity. According to Center for Science in the Public Interest report, 93% of all meals served at 13 major restaurant chains such as KFC and Burger King exceed 430 calories which is a third of what National Institute of Medicine suggests children under 8-years-old to consume in one day. For instance, Burger King “Big Kids” meal which consists of French fries, double cheeseburger, and chocolate milk has 910 calories, and that is three times more than it should be (“Study: Most kids' fast-food meals have too many calories”). Moreover, Natural News reports that “some of … food additives are not foods at all, but are chemicals that are generally recognized as safe.” Such ingredients are more likely to be found in a local hardware store than in a grocery. For example, the chicken offered at McDonalds has sodium phosphate which is used as a cleanser. Why is that? – “it isn’t dishwasher detergent” (Andrews). All these factors cause only bad consequences, and the most prominent and harmful one is obesity.
These days, sedentary lifestyle becomes very widespread, and a lack of activity among children ends in extra weight. Due to developing of new technologies, TV, videogames, and computers engage teens and keep them from healthy physical activities. In contrast to early days, the percentage of children who spend some time jogging, playing outdoors, climbing, or at least walking has rapidly decreased. According to information from Kaiser Family Foundation, average American youngsters watch TV or use a computer over
4-6 hours a day (Pate). To illustrate the significance of such physical inactivity, American researchers conclude that more than five hours a day of watching TV leads to extreme obesity (Lair). This shows that even five passively spent hours may cause deleterious consequences. Not only do playing videogames and watching TV pose a real risk of obesity to adolescents, but so does lack of physical education at schools. Today, daily physical education in elementary and middle schools isn’t required at more than a third of the states, and in 12 other states children can get credit just for completing online physical education courses. Moreover, the schools that mandate physical education don’t have specific educational program requirements, and attendance in offered classes is very low. For example, there are only 22% of students who have a physical education class every day (Helyn). This demonstrates that the
In general, parents, schools, and the government are the first to blame for the high rate of obesity among children today. Therefore, these people are the ones who can come up with efficient solutions to rectify this situation. One important problem that has to be solved is how to decrease an influence of unhealthy food on teens. To avoid children eating fast food, parents should encourage them to eat at home and construe the harmfulness of food made in such places as McDonalds or Burger King. It is a good idea to talk with children about TV food commercials and explain that although fast food in ads looks very attractive, it makes their bodies weaker and ailing. To educate children about healthy nutrition may be very helpful too. Also, it is better to feed youngsters with three salubrious meals a day avoiding high-fat food such as fried potatoes and using more fruits and vegetables such as apples, oranges, and tomatoes (Lair). Ban on fast food television commercial campaign might be one of the government active involvements that would result in decreasing of epidemic. The newest studies show that prohibition of junk food advertising may reduce the percentage of overweight children and adolescents up to 18% (“Ban on fast food TV advertising would reverse childhood obesity trends”). Researchers consider this as a really successful solution for today’s problem, but because TV advertising is so profitable for both market and the government, it is necessary to make more people and organizations aware of this problem and insist on government’s immediate actions.
Another aspect that should be taken care of in order to prevent childhood obesity is a lack of physical education at home as well as at school. Parents are the most influential people who are able to make juveniles’ sedentary life more active. Their contribution to children’s physical development may include motivating them to be more active and, for example, enjoy family bicycling or walking instead of sitting in front of TV. It is necessary to limit children’s videogames playing and TV watching to 3 hours a week (Lair). Also, it helps a lot to enroll youngsters in exciting team sport games such as soccer, basketball, or volleyball (“Preventing childhood obesity should be a family project.”). As a result, children can find playing soccer with friends much more interesting than playing soccer game on the computer, and enjoying their active life, they shouldn’t worry about overweight problems any more. If a person has a strong desire to avoid being obese, it is really possible to do. Researchers calculated that average Americans gain up to two pounds a year, and to keep off this extra weight, it is enough to add just 2000 steps a day, walk one mile, and cut 100 calories from your diet, which is about pat of butter (Hill).
Looking at real facts of today’s condition of obesity in the U.S. and considering the significance of this problem, any rational person would become indignant and full of desire to change something. Especially when it comes to children, our next generations, everyone understands the importance of fighting against this crisis. Analyzing the most prominent causes of obesity epidemic such as unhealthy food and inactive living, we can see that government and parents are able to decrease the rate of obesity among youngsters. The most helpful general solution is to change children’s lifestyle, their basic exercise and eating habits. Yes, it seems easy to move more and eat less, so why shouldn’t we start doing it right now. Choose your strategy of losing weight, make more people aware of seriousness of this problem, encourage them to fight against it, and be the part of the solution to the most dangerous epidemic that is attacking us today.
Works Cited
Andrews, John. “Surprise Ingredients in Fast Food.” Natural News 3 Nov. 2007 .
26 Nov. 2008 < http://www.naturalnews.com/022194.html>.
“Ban on fast food TV advertising would reverse childhood obesity trends.” Biology News
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Bray, George A. "Medical Consequences of Obesity." The Journal of Clinical
Endocrinology & Metabolism 89.6 (2004): 25 Nov. 2008 <http://jcem.endojournals.
org/cgi/content/abstract/89/6/2583>.
Calle, Eugenia E. “Body-Mass Index and Mortality in a Prospective Cohort of
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Prevalence of Overweight and Obesity Among Adults: United States, 1999-2002
Hill, Javes. “Why Americans ‘Tune Out’ Obesity Talk.” abcNews
Lair, Cythia. “Children Get Fat Watching TV.” Well Being Journal (
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Lyons, Julie Sevrens. “An Alarm Over Kid’s Weight.”
Pate, Russel R. "What is the Physical Inactivity and Physical Activity Level of Children and
Youth?" International Conference on Physical Activity & Obesity in Children.
Peng, Tina.”Five Financial Costs of American Obesity.” Newsweek
“Preventing childhood obesity should be a family project.”
“Staying Healthy.” Indianapolis 20 Nov. 2008 .
Stobbe, Mike. The Mercury News.
.com/aphealthnews/ci_10855741>.
“Study: Most kids' fast-food meals have too many calories” CNN.com 4 Aug. 2008 .
26 Nov. 2008 < http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/diet.fitn
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Trickey, Helyn. “No child left out of the dodgeball game?“ CNN.com 24 Aug. 2006 .
4 Dec. 2008 <http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/08/20/PE.N
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