Child Obesity

Herron 2

Over the past 30 years the amount of children and teenagers who are overweight has tripled. Of the children and adolescents in America, 16% to 33% are overweight and obese, making it very clear that obesity is a growing problem; one-third of America’s children are carrying more weight that they should to be healthy. Will child obesity numbers continue to climb rapidly over the years? Many reasons have been found for this growing disease.
There are two primary factors in the rising obesity levels. Children and adolescents are not eating the right foods as well as not getting enough daily exercise. With fast food diets increasing and exercise decreasing, our generation is facing very serious health problems such as trouble sleeping, breathing problems, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, and increased risk of heart disease.
Being overweight or obese also comes with facing mental challenges. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Anxiety, Depression and a drop in Self-Esteem can occur. The most common psychological issue is a drop in self-esteem, which is worsened when the children are unable to participate in everyday activities like sports or just playing with the other kids on the playground. Obese children are often teased and made fun of because of their weight, making them feel worse about themselves everyday. More common in adolescents, eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia develop as a result because the teens believe that starving themselves, or making themselves vomit after eating will help them become healthy and thin. When in actuality, the eating disorders are making them unhealthy and causing more physical problems that they previously had being overweight or obese. Although it is not easy for every person to stay thin and healthy ,especially children, parents have a responsibility to make sure their children learn to eat healthy and to have an active lifestyle to avoid becoming one of the children in the statistics for...