Obesity rates today have skyrocketed, particularly in children. Our society is driven by fast food with little nutrients, television that can be TIVO’ed, and hand held games marketed towards children starting at the age of 2 years that allow them to never get off of the couch. What effect has this had on our children?
Obesity is defined as a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or higher. BMI is the recommended way to calculate the amount of body fat that a person has using their height and weight. BMI’s between 25 and 29.9 are considered overweight while a BMI of 18.5 – 24.9 is considered to be a normal healthy weight. Obesity rates for children have gone up with a prevalence of up to 5-12% in children 2-5 years, 6.5 – 17% in those 6-11 years, and 5-17.6% in those 12-17 years. Studies have also shown that children who are obese before the age of eight are more then likely to suffer serious complications from obesity as an adult.
Emotional and Physical Health Affects
The health and emotional affects on children who are obese are tremendous. Obese children often experience psychosocial trauma, teasing, and belittling that can result in low self esteem and low confidence. In addition to the emotional toll, obese children are at risk for cardiovascular disease that may include high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and risk for getting diabetes. Other medical conditions that may occur although not as common include sleep apnea (cessation of breathing during sleep), asthma, and a fatty liver.
What Can Parents Do?
1) Model a more active behavior and lifestyle for your children. Choose more active activities for the whole family to do together instead of turning the television on like dancing or playing Frisbee, soccer or going for a walk or bicycle ride.
2) Read nutritional labels on food. Try to choose foods with low sodium, fat, and cholesterol content and the fresher the food the better. If you’d like to learn more about reading nutritional labels visit womens health site.
3) When cooking food stay away from frying when you can just as easily bake or steam an item to keep more of the nutrients in the food. Also, have plenty of fruit and vegetables available which comes in handy particularly when a quick snack on the go is desired.
4) Promote more water intake and use yourself as an example for your children. Try to dissuade the intake of soda or beverages with lots of sugar.
5) Change the type of milk that the family uses from whole milk to 2%, 1% or skim milk for less fat intake.
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May 8th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
Excellent post! This is really scary information. I have two children – 12 years and 2 years. My 12yo is continuously annoyed with me for restricting his computer/video game/tv time each day as his friends are permitted to do so much more but I am ok with that as he will one day know that I always had his best interests at heart.