Childhood Obesity
Obesity is the accumulation of excessive fat tissue. There are several ways of determining excessive fat; the most commonly used is the Body Mass Index (BMI). Childhood obesity is a disease that is taking over the world that people usually don’t think about like malaria or tuberculosis. Even though its effects aren’t immediate as the other two diseases, childhood obesity leads to problems that are just as bad. Even though schools, hospitals, and other places give out pamphlets and guides for healthy eating, childhood obesity is still on the rise and doesn’t want to come down. Childhood obesity has doubled in children ages 2 to 5, nearly tripled in ages 6 to 11 and tripled in ages 11 to 19 (NIH, 2013). Obese children …show more content…
The point of the campaigns should be to encourage healthy eating and exercise, not negative body image. The media can increase awareness of childhood obesity in many ways. According to American Academy of Pediatrics, “There are a number of ways that watching TV could be contributing to obesity: (1) increased sedentary activity and displacement of more physical pursuits; (2) unhealthy eating practices learned from both the programming and the advertisements for unhealthy foods; (3) increased snacking behavior while viewing; and (4) interference with normal sleep patterns.” There are commercials on TV on channels for kids that encourage exercise, which is good, but there aren’t many for teens. For example, there are two common commercials that deal with smoking and the number of teenagers that smoke has decreased since those commercials came out. As a parent, by following some of the suggestions from the American Academy of Pediatrics, Healthy People 2020, and other sources an advocacy plan I would make would be to limit the amount of TV a child watches per day while also controlling what they eat when watching
Obesity is the accumulation of excessive fat tissue. There are several ways of determining excessive fat; the most commonly used is the Body Mass Index (BMI). Childhood obesity is a disease that is taking over the world that people usually don’t think about like malaria or tuberculosis. Even though its effects aren’t immediate as the other two diseases, childhood obesity leads to problems that are just as bad. Even though schools, hospitals, and other places give out pamphlets and guides for healthy eating, childhood obesity is still on the rise and doesn’t want to come down. Childhood obesity has doubled in children ages 2 to 5, nearly tripled in ages 6 to 11 and tripled in ages 11 to 19 (NIH, 2013). Obese children …show more content…
The point of the campaigns should be to encourage healthy eating and exercise, not negative body image. The media can increase awareness of childhood obesity in many ways. According to American Academy of Pediatrics, “There are a number of ways that watching TV could be contributing to obesity: (1) increased sedentary activity and displacement of more physical pursuits; (2) unhealthy eating practices learned from both the programming and the advertisements for unhealthy foods; (3) increased snacking behavior while viewing; and (4) interference with normal sleep patterns.” There are commercials on TV on channels for kids that encourage exercise, which is good, but there aren’t many for teens. For example, there are two common commercials that deal with smoking and the number of teenagers that smoke has decreased since those commercials came out. As a parent, by following some of the suggestions from the American Academy of Pediatrics, Healthy People 2020, and other sources an advocacy plan I would make would be to limit the amount of TV a child watches per day while also controlling what they eat when watching