The Causes And Consequences Of Childhood Obesity

For the last few years, there has been an increase to the number of ailments that are suffered by children. It can be explained that the fact that these ailments mainly emanate from the lifestyle that the children are used; this implies that if the parents of the children are well versed on the ailments and how they can be avoided, there is a high chance that the prevalence rates of the lifestyle ailments among the children would be reduced. Childhood obesity can lead to many health problems such as high cholesterol, diabetes and many others. Many of those problems can be carried on to adult life and most of the time there is no way to reverse and have a healthier life back. Thus, because of the many problems child obesity can cause it is very …show more content…
As explained by Davies and Fitzgerald (4), childhood obesity is a severe medical condition that normally affects children as well as the adults. On the other hand, Kopelman (4-8) has expounded childhood obesity as a condition where excess body fat tends to have negative impact to the health as well as a development of the child. From the two definitions, it can thus be explained that childhood obesity involves children being overweight, hence the reason body mass index is used to determine whether the child is obese or not (Kopelman, …show more content…
Indeed, it can be noted that from numerous studies that have been carried out in the past, it has been found that the health of obese children is at risk of various conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes, breathing problem, and heart complications among others. On the other hand, it can also be explained that the chances of those who are obese as children being obese as adults are very high (Davies and Fitzgerald, 17). It can also be noted that childhood obesity has also resulted to low self-esteem, depression, and bullying. Childhood obesity affects 30% of children in the United States, therefore it is a situation that requires a lot of attention not only from parents, but also from everyone. Educating future parents, reeducate parents about the benefits of health eating habits are the first step to prevent childhood obesity. There are many organizations out there such as Strong4life that are willing to help parents to take better care of their children, this includes providing parents and kids a better understanding of being active in and out of school, making health dishes as well encourage them to be more involved into their kid 's