Childhood Obesity Essay -- Health Care, Diseases

"Today, about one in three American kids and teens are overweight or obese; nearly triple the rate from 1983. With good reason, childhood obesity is now the Number 1 health concern among parents in the United States, topping drug abuse and smoking. If current trends continue, today’s kids could be the first generation to live shorter lives than their parents" (Clinton, para. 3 2011). Children may not understand the complexities of food intake or obesity but they continue to be affected by the issue. The reality is that if a parent enables their kids to make poor eating choices as children; they will struggle as adults to make the right eating choices. Many factors contribute to childhood obesity but the major factors are living sedentary lifestyles along with poor nutrition and over consumption of fatty foods. Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English language defines obese as excessively fat; corpulent (bulkiness or largeness of body); overweight. According Charles Stuart Platkin, PhD, (2009) the child's Body Mass Index (BMI)-the number calculated from a person's weight and height- provides a reliable indicator of body fatness. A person's body fat percentage is the total weight of the person's fat divided by the person's weight and consists of essential body fat and storage body fat. A child’s BMI is calculated to asses there weight to make sure children are healthy at there current status. Based on research from the American Heart Association (2011) 23.4 million children ages two to nineteen are overweight and obese. 12.3 million of those children are males and 11.1 million are females. There is no debate about whether childhood obesity is a problem in the United States. The debate should begin with ackno... ...mputer or playing video games" (Childhood Obesity, 2011, p. 1) Considering a child is in school for approximately six to seven hours a day and is playing video games or watching TV four to five hours a day there is very little time left for physical activity that often gets neglected. Obesity often appears with children who consume far more calories than they can burn off. . It would take an averaged sized person, running at a pace of 10 minutes per mile, one hour to burn off all 620 calories consumed in the mighty mcnugget meal at McDonald’s. (Natural bodybuilding, 2011) Kids nowadays prefer watching SpongeBob Square Pants or nickelodeons cartoon network verse taking part in outdoor activities. An easy resolution in avoiding obesity issues among young children is to make time everyday for active activities and limit the amount of time the child sit stationery.