Childhood Obesity
...on television and on the radio. It's a very popular topic on mainstream talk shows; even Oprah has an episode about it at least once every season. We all know at least one overweight child, and sadly that rate is growing all the time.
Obesity is defined as an excessive accumulation of fat that increases body weight by 20% or more over ones ideal body weight. Childhood obesity can be caused by emotional, physiological, and familial factors. There is, however a small percentage of genetic factors that can also cause childhood obesity such as problems of the thyroid. Although, the main cause of obesity is simply the fact that kids eat too much and don't exercise enough
Many factors, usually working in combination, increase a child's risk of being overweight. Eating a large amount of high calorie foods, like fast foods, baked goods, and vending machine snacks certainly contributes to weight gain. When buying groceries, the parents should focus on buying more fruits and vegetables and stay away from the convenience foods that are high in sugar and fat. Healthy snacks should always be available and food should never be used as a reward or a punishment. Children should not be offered sweets as a reward for finishing a meal, because this teaches them to place a higher value on desserts and may make desserts more desirable to them rather than the healthy foods.
Having a sedentary lifestyle is another factor that contributes to weight gain. Statistics show that children spend at least six and a half hours a day with some type of media, such as watching television, playing video games and chatting on the internet. Children need to have at least 60 minutes of physical activity each day and cut down the media to about 2 hours per day. The easiest way to get kids to exercise is to just get them to play games that will keep them physically active like hide and...
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