Causes and Facts of Childhood Obesity

Increasing at an alarming rate, nearly one in three American children will be considered to be overweight or obese. Even though facts have shown that genetics is not a cause of childhood obesity, many people still believe that childhood obesity is the parent’s fault. In this paper readers will discover causes and facts of childhood obesity.

Childhood obesity is a serious medical problem that affects children. Obesity is a medical term, commonly defined as being extremely overweight, which is only half the case. (www.wikipedia.com) Many parent’s ask if their child is obese, or at risk of becoming overweight, and they ask what to do about it. MD, Dennis Clements tells parents: “Obesity is a family event, not an individual event”.

This problem has fueled debates and court cases. Most of the time parents of obese children are obese themselves, and if it is not a medical issue it could be a mental health problem that causes them to eat everything that they eat. “Defining childhood obesity as abuse would put a tremendous burden on obese children’s parents”. (Yam)

Bad experiences, such as divorce and separation are other ways that can cause childhood obesity. Some genetic or hormones causes of childhood obese, is caused by lots of eating and less exercising. “If a child opens up the fridge and is meet with loads of junk then that’s likely what they will eat”. (www.parenting.com)

According to the 1999-2000 National Health and Nutrition Examination survey says that, 16 percent of children around the ages of 6-19 years old are at risk of being obese. Obesity has increased in the last twenty years now. Obesity is like other disease, it impairs the normal body functioning. Children who are overweight have excess fat tissue that caus...

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...n. Many parents would agree that “back in the day” not enough excises would ever be a child’s problem because they are so active. On the other hand younger child seem to get involved with video games, computer programs and a lot of indoor activities.

In the 20th century children played sports more often, walked to school and more. The children of the 21st century make choices that are completely opposite. The sports children play these days include watching television, playing games and eating junk food. Watching television and playing millions of videos games are excuses to help children avoid exercising.

Obesity in African- American girls is the fastest growing among all the different demographic groups in America. Children with obesity problems will more likely to be at risk of impaired mobility asa well as be the end of stigmatization and discrimination.