Childhood overweight (or obesity) is one of the current medicine’s main concerns. Statistics show that in the european union 1 in 3 11 years- olds is overweight or obese; and the prevalence is increasing year on year.
This figures are alarming because childhood obesity is not only associated with underachievement in school and lower self-esteem: more than the 60% of overweight children will be overweight when they’ll become adults. This implies a higher risk of suffering chronic diseases (cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, orthopaedic problems, etc.) than normal-weight children.
Knowing this, lots of sanitary measures have been taken mainly targeted to improve health habits among children; for example:
(click on the image below to be up to date on european health campaigns)
Nevertheless, despite all these campaigns and measures, childhood obesity rate hasn’t shown a considerable improvement yet.
The situation is very similar in the US. Due to this fact, some researches in North Carolina have thought about changing the target of health campaigns. It has been demonstrated that children imitate their caregivers’ health habits, for this reason, seems convenient to try to improve health habits among caregivers in order to improve indirectly children’s ones.
(click on the image to get redirected to the full-text article)
In this study, 150 caregivers have been randomly divided in 2 groups of 75 people: control group and treatment group.
On the one hand, people of the treatment group had to change habits in three different areas: their own life, their home and their business (in order to avoid incorrect health habits derived of the lack of financial stability). The mission of those measures was to create a healthy environment which promotes infant health.
On the other hand, control group only had to improve in their business.
Obviously, the results on children’s health were totally different between both groups because “treatment group” caregivers improve their policies and practices related to healthy eating and physical activity while “control group” caregivers didn’t do it.
Questions
- What do you think are the main causes of childhood obesity?
- What would you do in order to reduce childhood obesity rate?
- Do you think it would be effective to introduce the KEYS intervention against childhood obesity in the EU?
Silvia
Hi Silvia!
ResponderEliminarAs you have said, obesity is one of the most important healthy issues to treat.
As far as I can see, the main cause of overweight is the fatty but not nutritive diet we follow for being part of a developed country. In my opinion this is promoted by the capitalism economic system that we have in Europe, USA and other countries around the world, where the main industry objective is to produce huge quantities of products (food) with the minimum cost. It means that they use the cheapest ingredients which are palm oil, colza oil instead of olive oil; hydrogenated fats because they are more tasty and cheaper than natural fats. Moreover they use refined sugar and sweeteners like aspartame instead of natural fructose increasing the obesity, diabetes and cancer rates.
So, to conclude, I believe that obesity is an economic matter and even that governments pretend to awareness the society, in fact, they don't have any interest in it. Because, as always, the economy has more weight than the health in our world.
Este comentario ha sido eliminado por el autor.
ResponderEliminarHi everyone!
ResponderEliminarIn my opinion, the main cause of childhood obesity is energy imbalance secondary to a sedentary lifestyle and an unhealthy diet. Although sports have become fashionable lately, there is a large percentage of the population that, because of excessive schoolwork or simply because they do not try it, do not play sports. On the other hand, the main cause of an unhealthy diet is the abundant advertising of the food industry, the convenience of eating prepared food and economic issues. Cases of genetic obesity are really scarce.
Since we are talking about childhood obesity, the measures to adopt should not be focused only on children. Parents should be involved too, as they are real responsible for feeding their children and the habits of youngsters are only a reflection of what they observe at home.
In order to make keys intervention effective, we should first make people aware of the seriousness of being obese and the health problems that this can bring in the long term. Perhaps it is precisely because of this, because health problems are not short-term, that people do not take drastic measures to get a correct weight for them
Raquel.
Hello everyone!
ResponderEliminarIn my opinion there are two main causes of childhood obesity. The first of them I tink it is due to the non-stop life that adults life now a days. We are so busy that sometimes we forget to take care properly of our own kids. I remember, when I was at school, some of my classmates brought to school money (which they spent on sweets) or prepared food, in order of a proper self-made sandwitch, because they were too young (or too lazy) to do it and the parents were too busy (or too lazy too) to prepare it as well. The second cause is because the lack of physical sport kids have now a days, some of them stay the whole weekend at home eating and playing videogames instead of going outside and do some sports.
In order to reduce the obesity rate, first of all I would ban machines which sell sweets in schools, because it looks like not every child has the maturity to eat just a small amount of it in special occasions, not every day. Second I would try to give more information about what obesity can produce because many people don't seem to understand it. For example the paediatrician could explain it to every single father or mother who came to consult in order to mentalize people of how this illness could really affect someones life, as it is considered twenty first century'S pandemic.
I think it coud be effective as caregivers are the ones who teach healthy habits. So every system which tries to make people eat healthier I think it could be useful.
Hello!
ResponderEliminarTalking about food is like talking about religion: no two opinions are the same. Food is a crucial part of all cultures around the world. Every culture has its own dishes and flavours and traditions. Perhaps this is the reason why it is so difficult to change certain habits and food choices, despite all campains about the importance of a healthy, balanced diet that include all sorts of fruits and vegetables.
When we are young, we depend on our parents to make us meals. I think it is at this age that we aquire our taste, our food preferences and our dislikes. Therefore, it is important to include parents in the process of changing certain habits, since they influence the forthcoming generations.
Hello everyone!
ResponderEliminarFrom an early age, we trust our parents to teach us right from wrong and we learn by following in their footsteps, which means that as we grow up we mimic our parents’ behaviours on a daily basis. With this in mind, to my way of thinking we cannot sugarcoat the truth: one of the main causes of childhood obesity is lack of education when it comes to food, diet and exercise from both parents and children.
Even though nurses and doctors go and talk to children in their schools about healthy habits, the fact is that provided the children are not eager to listen, they might as well be talking to brick walls. On the other hand, if we were to educate the parents about how to make healthier choices for their family then I believe we might achieve some astounding results.
That is where the KEY intervention may turn out to be a positive approach to dealing with this critical issue: if we promote infant health by changing some of our habits, then we can address this problem more effectively. Most importantly, we need to be cognizant of the fact that change must come from within and that we cannot expect things to be delivered to us on a silver platter.
Good morning everyone!!!
ResponderEliminarDoubtlessly, the more important reason for childhood's obesity is the example of their nearest relationships. If we look around us, we will see that most of obese children have obese parents, or these parents haven't got enough time for taking care their children. It's extremely difficult to resolve this, due to you need to change the life style of all the family. Certainly, the imposed steps on school and other public places are useful, but they are insufficient.
About the KEYS intervention, something like that could be used. Anything which helps to fight against the childhood obesity would be a good intervention.
Hello everyone!
ResponderEliminarThank you for presenting this topic, Silvia, because I think that this is a current problem that everybody must discuss, understand and treat anyhow. The reason why I believe this is that from my point of view childhood obesity, along with other risk factors, are the main causes of many diseases as you commented. So if we try to solve it, we´ll reduce them in a meaningful way.
About the causes of childhood obesity, I think that there are infinite possibilities, as Tiago said comparing food with religion. Maybe the main causes could be poverty, a low educational level, the current lack of time talking about the increasing number of women who work out of home, laziness…
As the causes are not really clear, to establish the measures for reducing caregivers obesity and childhood obesity consequently, is a very difficult task. It may be useful to make obligatory intensive courses for caregivers and their children, for that they learn the main points of a healthy nutrition, to do a menu planning to those who don´t eat well because they don´t have many time, or fast and healthy food… I don´t really know, but I think it could be an interesting measure to discuss and to perfect.
According to what I said on the previous paragraph, I believe that Keys Intervention against childhood obesity could be an efficient measure. To promote healthy diet and physical exercise is the key to begin this change.