Teen Obesity: A Public Health Crisis

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Teenage obesity is a major public health crisis nationally and internationally. “In 2012 the percentage of adolescents aged 12­19 years were obese.The increase of teenage obesity in 2010 to 2014 was from 5% to nearly 21% in the United States” (Flegal,2013). Teenage obesity is a serious problem in the United States and needs to be addressed.

Causes

Teenage obesity is caused by numerous of things such as a person’s lifestyle, eating habits, and environment. No single factor or behavior can cause obesity. When children decide to eat more than they need, their bodies store extra calories in fat cells to use this energy for later. Overtime if this pattern continues and their body does not need this stored energy, they develop more fat cells and may lead to becoming obese (Kaneshiro, 2012).

Eating Habits

Poor eating habits are one of the factors that can cause a teenager to develop obesity. Parents are also a key factor for a child becoming obese, at home parents tend to buy junk food for their children to eat rather things that they should be eating such as fruits and vegetables. Also parents also tend to have less time to plan and prepare healthier meals, as a result children are consuming more processed and fast foods that are usually less healthy than home cooked meals (Kaneshiro, 2012).If a parent is overweight and has poor diet and exercise habits, the child is likely to adopt the same habits.Up to one out of every five children in the U.S is overweight or obese, and this number is continuing to rise (Benaroch, 2012). The way we eat when we are children may strongly affect our eating behaviors as adults. When we repeat these behaviors over many years, they become habits. These learned habits lead to eating no matter if we are ...

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Karnik, S.K., & Kanekar, A.K. U.S. National Library of Medicine, (2010). Childhood

obesity: a global public health crisis. Retrieved from National center for biotechnology

website: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3278864/ Nordquist, C.N. (2010). All about obesity. Medical News Today,

Retrieved from http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/info/obesity/ Obesity in adolescents. (2014). (Doctoral dissertation, University of Rochester)

Retrieved from http://www.urmc.rochester.edu/Encyclopedia/Content.

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U.S Department Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, (2012).Overweight and

obesity­causes and consequences Retrieved from CDC website: http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/adult/causes/index.html

Weeks, A.W. (2013). Psychological effects of teen obesity. Live Strong, doi:353259

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