Childhood Obesity Clogged Artires!

Childhood obesity is quickly becoming an epidemic. Thirty years ago, only about 12% of children on continental North America would be considered obese, while in the next 20 years, we can expect to see the childhood obesity rate grow to over 70%.  This means that our children’s life spans will be even less than ours.  Obviously, this statistic is alarming to say the least.  What are the causes of child obesity?

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As a society, we have worked hard to make life more convenient for our busy lifestyles.  Unfortunately, some major side effects of this convenient lifestyle are lack of movement (exercise) and high calorie fat laden convenience foods.  Often, eating on the run means going through a drive through restaurant where the menu choices contain foods that have enough calories and fat in a single serving for a week’s worth of consumption.

Thirty years ago video games were not a huge fad, there were video arcades, but now many homes have a video game console with games that are highly addictive to children.  Many children want to spend countless hours playing these games and this means long periods of inactivity.  Inactivity is one of the leading causes of child obesity.

In addition, shopping at the grocery store these days presents its own special set of problems.
Many snack foods are high in calories, sugar and fat.  They are basically empty calories that add thousands of calories to the already poor diets of many children.  Basically, when you shop, if you reach for those foods that are convenient, you are setting your children up for failure.  If you were to avoid buying these types of foods, they would not be available in the home for your children to reach for when they are hungry.

These kinds of empty calorie foods do not provide any nutritional value and are basically a big waste of money.  Yes, they are convenient to feed your children in a pinch, but your children are not getting any food value from these items and these convenience foods are another of the leading causes of child obesity.

It is important to get the whole family involved in activities, such as going to the park for playtime, riding bikes, taking a walk.  Any kind of physical activity as a family teaches your children that it is an important aspect of a healthy lifestyle.  The best way to combat obesity is to be active regularly and lead by example.

Preventing Child Obesity!

We need to work together as a society and as individual families towards preventing child obesity.  Over the last ten years, our children have become larger than children of any generation before them.  There are many factors and reasons for this, including our lifestyles and the increasing prevalence of computers in every aspect of our life.  In addition, many foods are foods of convenience, yet they contain no real nutritional value.

Preventing child obesity means that we need to examine how our children eat and what they eat.  As parents, we need to provide them with nutritional meals and eliminate items such as sugary drinks and fatty snack foods.  We have become a society of people in a hurry.  We are in such a hurry that we don’t have time to stop and eat a nutritional meal.  Instead, we speed through the drive through and purchase a meal that contains enough calories to sustain us for an entire week.

It is becoming very important to think about these serious issues and work towards preventing child obesity by changing how we ourselves look at food and also how we get involved in physical activity.  We need to work together as a family unit towards healthier lifestyles.  This means purchasing more healthy food items, such as lean meats, whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables and lower fat milk products.  The more close to fresh that the food is, the better the value of the nutrition that it contains.

This means we need to avoid processed foods which contain unnecessary ingredients of no particular nutritional value to us.  They do not sustain us, only fill us for a short time and in fact, many of these foods are so high in things like sodium and sugar that they are very unhealthy for us and for our bodies.  When you consider children, their bodies are growing and developing at a very rapid rate, and it is of the utmost importance that they receive good nutritional value from the foods that they eat.

In addition, we need to discuss with our children the changes that we implement and why we are making those changes.  The more your children understand about good and bad food choices, the more they will learn about the effect that unhealthy eating habits can have upon them.  You can teach your children that preventing child obesity begins at home by making sensible choices and forming good eating habits.  Too often we rush when we eat.  The simple act of sitting around a dinner table as a family unit with no television on in the background can make all the difference in the world.

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