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How to reduce childhood obesity in schools
Obesity among schools children essay
Obesity in childhood
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Recommended: How to reduce childhood obesity in schools
Imagine a child who only gets to eat two meals a day and they are the meals he or she gets at school, right now those two meals they are getting at school are unhealthy, fatty, and full of unnecessary calories and carbohydrates. School cafeterias are planning to change to a new, healthier lunch menu, which will eliminate the fatty and unhealthy foods they currently serve to the students. School cafeterias should switch to healthier foods because it could stop childhood obesity, start a healthy lifestyle, and it could be more affordable for students. Schools switching to healthy food could stop or at least help fight childhood obesity. There are more than three million cases of childhood obesity found every year; the amount of cases have doubled in the past thirty years. Childhood obesity mostly affects children who are school age, this could cause them to get bullied in school. Childhood obesity occurs when children take in more calories than they should and do not use those calories. When children are in school and they eat …show more content…
Eating healthier foods have been noted to make people happier and cause them to have a better self esteem. Self esteem is a huge problem with girls in school, they begin to believe that they are not skinny enough or they are too fat. Some teenage girls begin to self-harm themselves because of self esteem issues, this could all be easily helped by having healthy foods available in school cafeterias to boost up their self esteem. Eating healthier food at school could influence children to start eating healthy at home too. They might even inspire their parents to start eating healthy too. Eating a healthy diet has been linked to providing people with more energy; when people have more energy they tend to be more active and are more likely to exercise. If children eat healthier in school, then they will be more likely to use their energy in a better
Schools are meant to give our children a healthy and nurturing environment, and yet so much of the lunches in schools are fattening; does this stop schools from achieving the aforementioned goal? Childhood obesity in the United Sates continues to be a growing problem despite so any new programs to help combat it, and new research is showing how schools may be playing a large role in childhood obesity. School lunches are showing to be the problem, they encourage poor nutrition in our nation’s students, and simple reform is proving to not be enough to stop the rise in obesity rates.
First of all, an increasing amount of kids are becoming overweight because their schools pressure them to eat sugary, fatty, and high-calorie foods. Not only do many schools promote consumption of harmful foods, many schools also actively serve them in school lunches. In 1963, 4% of kids were obese; currently, approximately 17% of kids are obese. Some might argue that kids themselves are the reason for the increase, because school lunches also provide healthier foods. Unfortunately, most kids do not have much of a choice - healthier foods are priced much higher than their unhealthy counterpart, consequently many parents do not want their kids to buy the more expensive, yet healthier product. In my 3½ years ...
...ars of school. Once kids eat their lunches they normally want to go run around and use some of that energy from the food so they can concentrate better in class. It is also a good thing to require because school gym is the only exercise most teens and children get throughout the day. It helps cut the growing rate of diabetes and obesity. Sports are also a good way to stay active and healthy. Not only are you constantly moving and getting tons of exercise, but sports teams normally offer a good healthy snack after games such as peanut butter crackers and juice boxes or nutrition bars and bottled water. It all makes a huge difference in the development of children and teens. If we take these small steps to change, we can easily redirect the lives of children and teens health. Having more nutritious lunches can have a positive impact on the health of American teens.
Since the fast food industry is targeting America’s youth, providing healthier options on children’s menus will reduce the rate of childhood obesity and allow for a healthy future.
“In 2012, more than one third of children and adolescents were overweight or obese.” (CDC) Childhood obesity is a problem that has inundated society for many decades. Almost anywhere that you go, you’ll see a magazine article or some sort of poster regarding childhood obesity. Childhood obesity can be defined as a condition where excess body fat negatively affects a child’s health or well-being. Majority of adults care about their weight because self-image is a very important factor in their lives, but when it comes down to children, many pay their weight a very minimal amount of attention. Due to the superfluous rise in the number of obese children over the past couple of decades, doctors and physicians have become concerned about this trend. This concern is raised by the various diseases and health issues accompanying childhood obesity. Childhood obesity puts children at a greater risk for developing health issues and diseases of the heart.
Childhood obesity is a chronic health problem in the United States. Today, "nearly a third of youths are overweight or obese" (National Collaborative on Childhood Obesity Research). Obesity affects children psychologically and physically. Obesity is a chronic imbalance of more calories consumed than expended each day. Childhood obesity is closely linked with housing and food securities, children without stable homes are more likely to suffer from hunger, chronic disease, and malnutrition. Demographic, socio-structural, and environmental variables also play a significant role in the childhood obesity prevalence and incidents. For instance, environments with lower than the average neighborhood, availability of healthy foods and higher than
Buddha once said, "To keep the body in good health is a duty...otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear." Students need a healthy body which leads to having a healthy mind. Once a child is in good health, they will feel better about themself which will make them succeed in everything else they do. A huge debate that is going on all throughout the United States is this- Should schools provide one healthy meal for students to help end the fight of childhood obesity? Schools are beginning to pick up the slack for the lost direction that children should receive at home. Childhood obesity is a growing epidemic all through our country. If we do not begin to take the initiative and stop this problem, then it may begin to spread worldwide. Americans need to realize the severity of the situation and begin to take in more seriously rather than brush it off as a light topic.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, “Childhood obesity has more than doubled in children and quadrupled in adolescents in the past 30 years,” meaning that America’s children need to start eating healthier, including healthier school lunches. The National School Lunch Act is a fairly recent addition to American society. For, as the world waged war a second time, the United States began to worry about the strength and health of the country’s soldiers. However, in the beginning, selling excess agricultural goods was more important than building a healthy, well-balanced meal for students. Unfortunately, many children coming from poorer families could not afford well-balanced school lunches, so in order to compensate, the School Lunch Program changed its focus to help these students. This program, however, decreased schools’ lunch budgets, and schools had a hard time keeping up with the amount of free meals they had to provide, so they came up with some extra ways to increase revenue. However, in a small town in Massachusetts, one chef makes a difference in the health of the school lunch students eat each day, and proves that hiring a trained chef to cook real, healthy meals can increase profit. Unfortunately, that is not the case in most schools across the nation. The quality of health of the food being served in school lunches is extremely poor and was allowed to decline even more with a new set of rule changes. However, there are some improvements currently being made to increase the quality of health of the food being served to students, including teaching them all about food and its nutritional information, both good and bad. In order for students to eat healthier lunches at school, the USDA needs to implement healthier ...
Many kids in America suffer from type 2 diabetes and obesity. Schools do not inform children enough on what they should know about to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Schools should give information about having a healthy lifestyle by what they offer kids for breakfast and lunch, offering health classes to children at young ages, and limiting the amount of unneeded material students are exposed to at school.
Since 1971, obesity has increased 70.4% (Lewis). Obesity has accelerated at a ridiculous rate. Over 32 million children eat school lunch every day (Lewis). One or two thirds of their daily meals are provided by their schools; therefore most of their daily consumption is trusted in the hands of our government (Lewis). Since obesity has escalated tremendously since the 1970’s, it is only reasonable to make their school lunches responsible for the growth in obesity over the last 45 years (Food Timeline).
To conclude, unhealthy foods in the cafeteria and the vending machines are the worst examples for the kids to maintain the healthy eating habits. Us Parents have to step in to make changes for our kids because in doing so would determine what kind of foods our kids are consuming. We do know for facts they are not getting the proper nutrients while in school, although they do spend in average of eight to 12 hours in schools. We, the parents, can start to make a difference, by attending the school meetings and being active in our kids functions in schools.
Obesity simply put, is an excessive amount of body fat. Obesity puts children at increased risk of disease and other health-related problems. Childhood obesity is a very serious and ongoing problem-putting children on the pathway to health conditions earlier in their life such as diabetes, elevated cholesterol, hypertension. Childhood obesity also has a link to depression as well as affects the self-esteem of children and adolescent. I recently performed a community teaching on childhood obesity and will be discussing the teaching experience, observation, summary of the teaching plan, epidemiological rationale for childhood obesity, evaluation of my teaching and the community’s response to the teaching.
Childhood obesity is a huge problem in the world today and effects many children. Everyone agrees that this is a problem that needs to be taken seriously and handle in the proper way. What people cannot agree on is what the “proper way” entails. Some people feel that children should be left in their homes and families should be given resources to help their children. Others feel that child protective services (CPS) should step in and take the child away from the family that allowed them to become obese.
When talking about school, we think of children learning different subjects, history, math, science and etc. I think learning about health and healthy life choices is as important as any other subject, and that should not just be restricted to classrooms. Schools have a great opportunity to educate young people about the importance of being healthy. We all know it is no secret that junk food makes you fat, but studies have shown that over the past ten years, obesity has doubled to 8.5 percent among six year olds and trebled to an astonishing 15 percent among 15 year olds. If we do not do anything about it, then this generation of children could be the first to live shorter lives than their parents.
Kids and teens who eat better and stay active have a higher self-esteem than kids who sit at home and eat junk food all day. “Over processed foods are linked to feelings of depression. Healthy eating naturally makes a child feel great due to the high quality of nutrition available in natural wholesome foods and low sugar and fat content,” Carla Daffy(2). A child’s self-esteem is very important if they feel good about themselves and how they look then they will have the confidence to succeed in other areas of life as well. You want to make sure not to put too much pressure on kids or teens about their image because that could damage their self-esteem if they don’t feel “up to standards.” Instead of opinions on what they’re doing wrong, eat healthy with them, do activities with them. Show them there is no pressure and let them follow your example. Kids who feel great will do