A Public Health Crisis:
Who Should Be Held Accountable for Childhood Obesity?
According to the Center of Disease Control (CDC) 1 in 5 American children and adolescents are obese. Obesity comes with the health risks that can lead to death which makes Obesity in children extremely alarming, and the question arises why are so many children obese and who is to blame for childhood obesity in the United States? Some people insist that being obese/overweight is genetic and that there is nothing they can do about it. However, when it comes to children it is often the adults who are to blame for the children's weight. There needs to be adequate education for both adults and children on healthy living to combat the growing number of obese children in our country.
This topic has recently started to become more and more documented and looked into with the rise in obese adults in the United States. Naturally people have also noticed that obesity rates amongst children in the United States are also slowly rising. I have noticed an alarming number of children that look obese and looking back on my childhood all of my younger brothers were overweight/obese and especially when such an avoidable health condition is in your family you can’t help but ask why? Now my brothers are adolescents, one of them (Adrian) is a healthier weight mean while the other one (Omar) has stayed overweight. According to the CDC from 2017-2020 around 22.2% of adolescents were obese. Seeing the difference between 2 people reiterates the question of what the cause for obesity is.
My past knowledge about childhood obesity and children being overweight was very limited, as I didn’t know much about the science behind it and what the dangers of it were. As I work to answer my research question, I have been reading research papers and watching documentaries to find more information on why so many children are overweight/obese. In the future, I plan on interviewing my brother, Adrian, who I previously mentioned was overweight to get a better understanding of what his life was like when he was younger. I plan to ask questions such as: When you were younger, Did anyone educate you about nutrition? How much food did you eat? How active were you? Do you believe there was someone who was responsible for weight? I plan to interview my mother who raised them since she was responsible for their nutrition when they were younger. Finally, I hope to interview the doctor who was in charge of my brothers during their childhood.
In the Introduction I will start by defining what it means for someone to be overweight/obese and provide additional background information on childhood obesity and why this is something that should be urgently looked into. My body paragraphs will discuss studies that show that it is beneficial for children to be educated on nutrition. I would also like to provide my solution which is to teach children about nutrition in school, giving them building blocks so they have an idea of what a healthy lifestyle looks like. Then when children reach adolescence they should be given more in depth information about nutrition since they would be older and therefore could better understand what is being discussed. My goal with this research is to bring forward an effective solution to stop the growing number of obese children so they are able to live a higher quality life and help build good habits that can carry into adulthood.
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