Obese children statistics become more frightening every day.
It is now a world wide situation that many are using words such as "crisis", "epidemic", and "tragedy" to describe.
According to the Center for Disease Control, half the population under the age of 18 in North America, are considered to be clinically overweight or obese.
It has become a health issue of staggering proportion, due to an absence of education, nutrition, and exercise.
Excuses such as not having time to exercise come from children who spend over 25 hours weekly watching television, and playing video games.
Parents who spend the same amount of time partaking in these activities, present an example that allows kids to perceive the amount of time spent on them as being acceptable, while their health continues to deteriorate.
While the television is on, commercialism associates unhealthy foods that contain large amounts of salt, sugar, and fat, with the passageway to becoming socially acceptable, and having fun.
Of course the children in these commercials appear well nourished, active, slim, and healthy.
Obese children are very apparent everywhere that I look, but were even more so during a recent trip to my hometown.
I was stunned to see far more than 50% appear to be overweight or obese, then not surprised to discover that a greater percentage of parents were unfit and unhealthy.
Many friends I had once known as being fit and trim, had become almost unrecognizable to me.
I visited several that I had not seen for years, whose homes were well equipped with junk food, television, and computer games for myself and their families to enjoy! This article is intended to enlighten, and focus on a few of the causes regarding how our overweight and obese children came to be this way, and makes little mention of the many diseases(heart, liver, kidney, diabetes, etc.
) that can become a result of this unfortunate situation.
More education is required regarding how this happened, how to prevent it, and how to treat childhood obesity and overweight kids!