What Is The Leading Cause Of Childhood Obesity

Obesity may be defined as having excess body fat and can be determined by the body mass index percentage using a growth chart (Xu, Xue 16). There are many contributing factors that play a role in childhood obesity. Those factors that can cause a child to become obese is their parents, family genetics, the environment around them, lack of physical activity, and the different sources of technology that is available today. Childhood obesity is a constantly increasing worldwide epidemic (Xu, Xue 15). Many people blame fast food restaurants for childhood obesity, but they are not the ones to blame. The employees at fast food restaurants are not the ones allowing children to eat their food. The leading cause of childhood obesity is the parents because …show more content…
Parents choose to buy the less healthy foods because they can be cheaper. When parents do not feel like cooking, they go eat at fast food restaurants. Fast food restaurants can contribute to the cause of obesity in children, but they are not the only ones to blame. Children are not forced to eat fast food; they choose to eat it. Some parents also work long hours during the day, so once again children are not getting a healthy meal to eat. If parents would have healthy food in the house for their children to eat while they are at work instead of leaving them money to buy take out, children would not have to eat fast food. Also children do not have their own money to buy fast food; their parents provide them with the money. Eating fast food is not bad. The restaurants do not make you choose foods that are high in calories or unhealthy for you. For example, at Panera you can get a salad, pasta, or sandwiches that do not contain many calories. Like many other fast food restaurants, they have healthy food choices for you to pick. People need to stop blaming fast food restaurants for childhood obesity because they are not forcing you to eat it and it is not their fault children are not choosing the healthier food choices that they have on their menus. Parents need to lead by example and consume the healthier food such as fruits, vegetables, and whole grains because if their children see them eating healthy then the children would most likely follow in their parents’ footsteps. It is said that families who eat together consume more healthy foods (Sahoo, Choundhury, Sufi, Kumar, and Bhadoria 188). The more time families spend together eating healthy foods, the less time children have to sit around and eat junk