Obesity In Children

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the lack of energy used while lounging on the sofa, it is also due to the amount of high -calorie snacks consumed while watching the long hours of television; not to mention the most frequently advertised television commercial is food. It doesn’t help that “only about one-third of elementary children have daily physical education, and fewer than one-fifth have extra-curricular physical activity programs at their schools (Ross & Pate, 1987).
The mass media also continues to promote excessively thin body images and plays a negative role in the development of bad eating habits. Less than one-third of U.S. pediatric residency programs teach about the effects of media exposure on children’s health (Dr. Michael Rich, Harvard Med School). It would be ridiculous to try to say that these images have no effects.
In today’s society, we are also seeing more and more children under the age of twelve developing eating disorders. “White girls, who develop a negative body image, are at greater risk for the subsequent development of eating disorders (American Obesity Association). Anorexia nervosa and compulsive eating are the most common among such young children, but there are also cases of bulimia being reported. “It is estimated that forty percent of nine year olds have already dieted and we are beginning to see four and five year olds expressing the need to diet” (Colleen Thompson, 1996). These early obsessions with food are setting our kids on a path of destruction and unhealthy relationship with food. Children who are compulsive eaters are usually using food to help them deal with feelings of anger, sadness, hurt, loneliness, abandonment, fear, and pain.
Parental influence is very important to any child, and the overweight child is no exception. The risk of becoming obese is greatest among children with two obese parents. This may be due to genetic factors, or more likely due to the examples of exercise and eat...