Articles On Childhood Obesity

If people want to know whether their child will suffer from childhood obesity, there are signs that they will need to watch out for. Obesity especially among children is becoming more and more common these days because of a number of factors. Many children spend a lot of their time sitting around watching television and computers or playing video games. Even few years back the scenario was considerably different and people could see that children did not have any video consoles, computer games, or hundreds of channels on the television. The only escape children had those days was to play outside, which not only kept them physically active, but burned a lot of calories.

The lack of physical activity in present life style among children is a major contributor in childhood obesity. When people think that a lot of kids spend 30-40 hours a week playing video games and stuck in front of the television, they have to realize that will be a lot of stored calories which are not being used. Food rich in fat and carbohydrate is another culprit as to the cause of obesity in children. Many parents in today's world work long hours in their jobs, and to be fair, a lot of parents have to, just to get by. This actually leaves very little time for a family to eat together, which used to be a traditional way of eating. Now it is the main question of, grab what people can get, when they can get it.

Apart from all these factors who has the time to cook meals from scratch on a daily basis! It is also getting very difficult nowadays to find out actual healthy food, due to the way food is grown and packaged. Most of the food people eat is full of chemicals and preservatives, so it is not really healthy, regardless what it says on the packet or tin. There is no simple solution to this problem. However in accordance to food, the best that any parent can do is to start introducing more vegetables and fruit into their children's diets. The matter to keep in mind is that parents must also eat what they are trying to get their children to eat. There can never be one rule for parents, and a different one for their kids. This will not work.

As for regular physical activity, this actually should be influenced by parents if they want to avoid the problems of childhood obesity. Initially parents should always make the rules for their children and encourage kids to be more active. This is done by joining in with the children in any activities, and not just buying the child a ball and kicking him or her out into the garden. Of course making considerable changes is not easy, especially when kids have fallen into certain habits. Introduce any changes gradually. Parents need to be patient very much and stick to their guns. If they stick with it, their child will have to come around to it sooner or later. The parent can actually take a good look at their child, and see if the life that they are leading at the present is a life that is heading into childhood obesity, if they are seeing the signs, then it is time to make changes.

• Matt Thompson
• 28/02/2009, 8:59 PM
• 0 Comments