American with all its advancement in technology and medical breakthrough is one of the world’s leading countries in childhood obesity. For obesity to be stemmed among young people, the cause, the effects and prevention must be dealt with first.
Everyone has a body, children as well as adults; and weight corresponds with height and gender; when there is more than twenty percent stored fat on the body that person is considered obese. For example if a child’s ideal body weight should be sixty pounds and he or she weights eighty pounds or more this child is considered obese..
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Training of a child begins in the womb. Many times we have all seen pregnant women who gain forty or fifty pounds during pregnancy. Is the baby eating too? Everything the mother eats the baby eats too. If she develops the bad habit of eating constantly the baby
more often than not will do the same, also if the mother eats healthy food the child will have a predisposition to healthy foods. I have personally seen toddlers who turned out to be greedy because their mothers never stop eating during pregnancy. Nurse Practice (2010), reports that “experts at the Association for the Study of Obesity annual meeting agree that the foods eaten by mothers during pregnancy, affect the eating habits the child in later years. “Experts believe that food eaten by the mother flavour the amniotic fluid and the breastmilk fed to the infant.” (www.nursinginpractice.com/article/mothers-eating-habits). There is no doubt that training starts in the womb.
This is a rush, rush world and very often parents have little time for themselves and their children; consequently when a baby cries it is easy to shut him or her up by giving him or her food. Many times I have seen babies crying and it is obvious that the babies are tired yet, the mothers keep forcing food on them. And there are other times when the baby cries and is given food, soon the babies will learn to eat in cases of discomfort. These babies will not always be infants; soon they will be toddlers and preschoolers and everything bad eating habit that was taught to them will develop and before these children even start school they are already obese. Using food for comfort is a practice of many mothers and it does not matter to which strata of society they belong.
The odds are really against the children of America. Everywhere there are candies in a thousand varieties; there is cookie, chips soda, there are but a few of the junk at children’s disposal. And every commercial break on television at least one junk food is shown. There is no more good cold cereal, every one of them is full of sugar, and most children do not like hot cereal because they do not taste as good as the cold cereals. There are some cereals that are no better that giving the children cookie and mild for breakfast. Then there are the fast food breakfast, egg, cheese, and sausage, no one needs all this fat, however, it tastes really good. In the defense of fast food, there are some of them that serve oatmeal. Junk food in America is cheap and easily accessible.
Even though more and more people are changing their diets and staying away from animal protein it is still the most stable protein in America. With technology as advanced as it is in America, scientists have decided with the government’s approval to speed up meat production. Feed for animals including chicken is full of hormone. Purdue who advertises that its chickens gets natural food, chicken are ready to eat in one month, this can only happen if these chickens are fed feed lace with hormone. Perdue is not the only one who does this, everybody else this. The only people who escape this are the children who are vegetarians or who are fed organic foods. When these children are fed these hormone developed mea, their maturity is sped up just like the cattle and the chickens. These kinds of meat are very fatty and no many people trim the meat of fat or skin their chicken.
A balanced meal can turned out to be a very unhealthy meal. The best way to eat chicken is to skin and trim the fat and bake it; but this does not taste as good as seasoning it and deep fry. Chicken is not the fattiest food, all cold cut food are fatty. Especially hot dogs and franks; they are the remnants of meat wrapped in intestines. When you children are fed these type of food, and they are not served in moderation; the results are usually obese children. Good foods costs money; and times are hard but parents should strive to make the best of what they have. The ideal amount of meat for a child is two ounces, children do not need to have a plate of meat; and they should be encouraged to clean their plates before they have seconds. Children will eat their meat, do not touch their vegetables and ask for more. By the time they have eaten everything in their plats they are almost always full. Many people think that fruits are dessert, but it should be served as part of the meal. Jaipi Sixbear (2010) says that:
Hormones beget early puberty. Early puberty begets obesity. Where do these excess hormones come from? You are what you eat. Some say the problem is at least partially caused by the hormones in our food supply. Factory farms have a need to produce meat quickly. This is where growth hormones come in. Livestock is injected with hormones. These cause meat and milk to be produced faster. We eat factory farmed meat and dairy products. We eat hormones right along with it.
Over-weight can have adverse effects on children. It affects them mentally; they are picked on at school, they are laughed at, they cannot take part in most physical activities, they are depressed , and have low self-esteem; ;these factors can cause children to eat even more. There are also physical repercussions: diabetes, heart disease, kidney problems, blindness due to diabetes, and hypertension, Silink, Kida, Rosenbloom (2003) report the following that: “Obese children and adolescents suffer co-morbidities affecting almost every body system Immediate effects include social and psychological problems, while long-term effects include the establishment of risk factors for cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes and the development of adult obesity” (71). Overweight affects children in ways that are most times over-looked, it makes children tired easily and sleepy, therefore it affects their education; if they are sleepy in class they miss parts of the lesson and may get failing grades. “More than 90% of American youth eat at McDonald's at least once per month. 14% of American 2-5 year olds are overweight over the past ten years obesity in teens and children has tripled. One child in three in America is overweight.” (http://www.invisibleweightloss.com/dangers-of-childhood-obesity.html),
Some parents must enjoy seeing their children overweight. When Murray Povich used to be on prime television, he aired a show that shows extremely overweight children. Some of these children weighted twice their ideal weight. A three year old boy was able to one whole large pizza and he drank after; these children could not have cold cereal for breakfast, unless they were having the whole box, because it would not fill them enough; and in two hours these children are eating again. The sad part is one of these children belonged to a nurse who said she could not make her baby go hungry. These children practically ate dinner throughout the day. When children are so overweight, they will have a very hard time in school; just walking to lunch will be too much for them. Every step will tire them, and that will be excessive burden on their hearts. It is hard to believe that parents could really allowed three year old children to eat so much.
If let alone a child will eat any or everything; however parents need to take control of their children. They should stop buying junk and buy more fruits and healthier snaks. They should not buy sodas, some states give parents subsidized milk, cheese, eggs, juice and peas, for these parents there is no need to buy soda because it is cheap. A child should be trained to eat three square meals each day; not eating all day. Eating and watching television are intertwined, therefore parents should monitor their children’s television time,; they are bombarded with too much temptation, children should get out of the house and play. Very often when children are overweight, parents are also overweight, and they can make walking a family past-time; children learn by example. Children can have a treat or dessert once or twice per week, that way they will not feel depraved or hide and eat, “forbidden foods.” Children can be trained to cultivate good habits. Sharon Dalton (2004) states that the genetic factor of children greatly influenced childhood obesity; however if parents provide more healthy eating habits, cut the amount of time children spend watching television, and encourage the children to outdoor activities, the overweight epidemic would be greatly reduced (62).
There is no denying the fact that food taste good, especially junk food; if we are going to have a nation of healthy children both parents and children will have to learn to eat healthy. The government needs to play its part too by stopping factory farming and allow animals for consumption to develop the old fashion way, grazing in the fields.
Work Cited
Dalton, Sharon. (2004). Our Overweight Children What Parents, Schools, and Communities can do to control the fatness epidemic. Los Angeles, University of California Press. Print
“Dangers of Childhood Obesity & What you can do About It” invisible weight Loss .com http://www.invisibleweightloss.com/dangers-of-childhood-obesity.html, Retrieved April 29, 2013
“Mother’s eating habit affects baby.” www.nursinginpractice.com/article/mothers-eating-habits. Retrieved April, 30, 2013
Silink Martin, Kida Kaichi, Rosebloom, Arlan. (2003) Type 2 Diabetes in Childhood and Adolescence. London, New York. Martin Dunitz Press. Print
Sixbear, Jaipi. (2010). “Early Puberty, Factory Farms-What’s the Connection.” Yahoo Voices Retrieved April, 30, 2013
