'Parental Decisions Impact Childhood Obesity Essay\r'

' parliamentary law, in general, has drastically changed over the gone century. product and expansion allow surface the way for immature technological advances, just non with some downfalls to go along with it. mavin much(prenominal)(prenominal) downfall of new technology would be the â€Å" thingumajig work out” ( at rest stores for junk viands, comfortable to take hold of television, romance moving-picture show games, watch a movie, talking to or textual matter on a cellular mobilize as remote to carnal exercise, convenient for p bents to keep by fast provender as argue to wellnessy meals). Lack of p argonntal controls in these aras in conjunction with the â€Å"convenience reckon” has lead to small fryhood fleshiness.\r\nThis is an increasingly ontogenesis illness and leave widen to be so if society does non stop being so convenient. The Ameri stack Society to solar day has become â€Å"obesogenic’, characterized by enviro nss that drive increased nutrition intake, ill foods, and strong-arm in occupation (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2010). mountain ( squirtren and adults) spend more duration in front of televisions or computers and less fourth dimension exercising. We drive a car over we go as contradictory to paseo or riding a bicycle. Children lick more telecasting games instead of performing spread over and assimilatek, which requires them to run around, being sprightly and collarting exercise.\r\nWe lead busier do its so sentence does not allow for spending it in the kitchen preparing reasoned meals. Pargonnts live such hectic lifestyles which often lead to dining or getting take out at a fast food restaurant, fashioning them guilty of contri justing to childhood fleshiness. Children with weighty p bents argon likely to follow in their p arnts footsteps and become obese themselves. Overweight and fleshiness result from an goose egg deficiency. This incorpo rates taking in too much food (too galore(postnominal) calories) and lack of exercise; thus be obesity.\r\nThe imbalance among calories consumed and calories put ond nates result from the influences and interactions of a number of factors, including inherited, behavioural, and environmental factors. Studies indicate that sealed genetic characteristics whitethorn increase an mortal’s expertness to excess trunk weight. However, this genetic cogency may contend to exist in conjunction with impart environmental and styleal factors (such as a high-calorie food yield and minimal personal activeness) to have a signifi chamberpott payoff on weight. transmitted factors alone can childs play a role in specific cases of obesity.\r\nThe genetic characteristics of the human population have not changed in the last three decades, notwithstanding the prevalence of obesity has tripled among school- epochd children during that conviction. Because the factors that contribu te to childhood obesity interact with each other, it is not possible to specify one bearing as the â€Å"cause” of obesity. Behaviors include energy intake, animal(prenominal) action, and sedentary behavior. Home, child cargon, school, and alliance environments can influence children’s behaviors colligate to food intake and sensual military action (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2009).\r\nParents in the body of work often lead demanding, hectic lifestyles that have a direct reflection on base of operations life activities. Activities, such as consume habits for their children, are a contingency of their fast-paced environment. Such lifestyles lead to debauched un healthy meals, such as fish fillet at a fast-food establishment and consume a high caloric meal. These types of meals are historically unhealthy with no nutritionary value. Nutritional items, such as fruits and vegetables, are limited at these types of establishments. Healthy, home cooked meals are not the â€Å"normal” issue for parents to proffer their children of this era.\r\nTime does not allow for parents to stand up healthy, home cooked meals. â€Å"The evidence is compelling that the obesity epidemic is largely caused by deal’s eating unhealthy food and consuming bigger portion sizes. These unhealthy behaviors are not just a matter of poor decisions individuals make; alternatively, the environment in which people live determines behavioural choice” (Isaacs & Swarts, 2010). Parents’ workplace habits can directly affect their children’s goalic eating routines. Children are relying on parents to come through them with healthy meals.\r\nThere are numerous things parents can do to assist children in developing healthy eating habits. pass fruits and vegetables, dairy products or whole cereal items as nutritious snacks, as opposed to allowing them to submerge themselves in chips or scribble filled snacks, is a viable pick to an unhealthy diet. The obesity rate for children would subside if parents would make time to plan a healthy weekly menu. By doing so, parents are ensuring that their children get the nonchalant recommended amount of fruits and vegetables in their diet, thus making for a healthy child.\r\nParents should lead by example. Children take on to mind parents eating different things, to sum upenance the child to want to try new food items. â€Å"Children and adolescents are dependent on their parents for both economically and emotionally during much of this period of rapid growth” (Davies & Fitzgerald, 2008, pg. 25). star of the best ways to decrease obesity in children is to increase physical activity levels throughout the entire family. Parents, at home or at the workplace, are face daily with busy schedules, long hours and time man suppuratement issues (i. e. nsuring all required daily activities, such as household responsibilities, errands are compl eted).\r\nThese tasks are direct contributors for the lack of time set aside for physical activity with their children. Also, parents’ daily work schedules do not allow much, if any, time to incorporate a daily physical exercise routine for their children, let alone to monitor such activities. Parents should act as role models by setting examples for their children, such as allowing their children to see them exercise and being active themselves. By â€Å"leading by example”, this should encourage children to emulate them.\r\nAccording to the American magnetic core Association and the National Association for disport and Physical Education (Payne, 2010), children should get at least 20 minutes of invariable vigorous exercise that makes them sweat and catch ones breath hard. With the apparent lack of physical activity, parents need to create an environment that is conducive to construct a daily regime of physical activities that slowly grow over time. â€Å"procee ding spent playing kickball with friends during recess count toward the hour-long daily goal, as does climbing trees in the backyard after school. It doesn’t have to be all at once,’ says Nancy Brown, CEO of the AHA.\r\n‘Kids should be doing things appropriate for their age, so that [exercise] becomes a behavior and a natural part of what they do’” (Payne, 2010). Providing just small increments of daily activity that is geared towards the child’s age category can foster a lifetime of behavioral changes that could prevent the oncoming of obesity at a ulterior age. Another factor in the saga of contend childhood obesity is the issue of guard duty and having a ripe environment in which to add physical activity.\r\nAdvocate for well-maintained, safe sidewalks and bike paths in your similarity, and unpaid worker to do the use of school facilities after hours. Children are more likely to want to play outsideâ€and you’ll feel more satisfied with them doing itâ€if it’s safe, so attend neighborhood association or city council loseings to demand proper upkeep of nearby sidewalks and paths. Also, date gyms and tracks at local schools as options for physical activity after hours and on weekends.\r\nOften, schools are imparting to make gyms and equipment available on the weekends but simply need parents to volunteer to supervise, Brown says” (Payne, 2010). This avenue of taking facilities that already exist and adding in a galosh factor so that they may be used more often could fall into a vast majority of neighborhoods and schools that are currently excluding physical education programs. This ostensibly mundane action by a few sets of determined parents could catch on and create new and exciting ways in which physical activities could be introduced to children.\r\nIn today’s day and age of electronics, technological advances in this area continue to facelift at record numbers. Featur es and upgrades to galore(postnominal) electronic devices are geared toward a more convenient, user friendly sign market. Such markets, unfortunately from a health perspective, are focused on our children. comfortable and satisfying methods of entertainment, such as television, movies, ikon games, talking/texting on cellular headphones, computers, etc. far outweigh pure physical activity and exercise. Parents’ lack of control in these areas, as opposed to physical exercise, is a factor in childhood obesity.\r\nChildren would rather be sedentary playing electronic games on a television, cellular phone or computer, as opposed to playing games requiring physical exercise, such as hide and seek or kickball . â€Å"The media may underframe children’s food choices and caloric intake, including exposing children to coaxing messages about food, cuing them to eat, and depressing satiety cues of eating while think. According to estimates by the national Trade Commissi on (FTC), children between 2 and 11 days are clear to 25,600 advertisements per year, of which 5,500 (or 15 per day) are for food or beverages.\r\nA 2009 content analysis of foods announce during children’s television programming revealed that well-nigh foods marketed to children are high in salt, sugar, and enlarge and low in nutritional value, and that healthy food are virtually imperceptible” (Jordan, 2010). This barrage of brain-altering subliminal messaging towards freshly forming minds lends credence to how other areas of technology are creating pathways to enter impressionable youths. We live in a world that is technology compulsive in which new devices are created much to make life more convenient.\r\nThe American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that television viewing by children older than two years be limited to two hours per day or less avoided alin concert for children jr. than two years. Surveys of join States parents found that well-nigh families do not adhere to these recommendations” (Jordan, 2010). These families that take into account this amount of television viewing for their children use it as a virtual nanny to keep the child entertained and deflect throughout the day. In today’s health conscious society, there are many reasonable alternatives to just charge a child zoned out in front of various electronic devices.\r\nOne such alternative that is catching on with many families is the Nintendo Wii. â€Å"The AHA and Nintendo recently teamed up to rear the use of the Wii Fit to help Americans meet recommended physical activity guidelines. The goal of the partnership is to teach people how so-called ‘active-play’ video games encourage regular exercise. If you’re having a tough time getting your child to play outside, consider buying a video game that requires the child to get moving, Brown suggests” (Payne, 2010). The use of this new video game device has provided many families with not only an opportunity to exercise, but to overly interact as a family unit.\r\nInteracting together provides an environment that can create upcoming positive habits that might help in the obesity battle. Following recent studies on childhood obesity, it has been found that â€Å"In the United States, childhood obesity is on the rise; the division of obese children aged 6 to 11 more than doubled in the past two decades, while the percentage of obese adolescents aged 12 to 19 more than tripled, during the same period as well” (Li & Hooker, 2010). Medical contributors to childhood obesity, such as genetics and/or heredity, are considered uncontrollable and unchangeable to the health and well-being of a child.\r\nThe imbalance between calories consumed and calories used can result from the influences and interactions of a number of factors, including genetic, behavioral, and environmental factors. Studies indicate that certain genetic characteristics m ay increase an individual’s susceptibility to excess body weight. However, this genetic susceptibility may need to exist in conjunction with contributing environmental and behavioral factors (such as a high-calorie food supply and minimal physical activity) to have a significant effect on weight.\r\nGenetic factors alone can play a role in specific cases of obesity” (CDC, 2009). Battling all these convenience issues willing prove to be a lengthy social problem to be solved, but for the sake of future(a) generations of children that will probably be the first to not outlive their parents, it is one that should have the highest priority. Parents establishing controls over guidelines set forth and constant supervise of such to decrease childhood obesity is not a â€Å"sprint”, but more comparable to a â€Å" marathon”.\r\nThis requires lifestyle changes both for the parent and the child. unvarying monitoring on the parent’s part, along with both pa rent and child â€Å"staying the course” now will adduce dividends for the future of a healthy America. We are all creatures of habit. In the end, the goal should constantly be for these changes to become second nature. We live in a society driven by a constant; change. Growth and expansion will continue to contribute new technological advances, with downfalls associated.\r\nOne such downfall, the â€Å"convenience factor” (convenient stores for junk food, convenient to watch television, play video games, watch a movie, talk or text on a cellular phone as opposed to physical exercise, convenient for parents to stop by fast food as opposed to healthy meals) will have a direct correlational statistics between parental decisions and the health of children for future generations. Lack of parental controls in these areas in conjunction with the â€Å"convenience factor” will produce childhood obesity cases at record numbers. This increasingly growing disease wil l continue to be so if society does not stop being so convenient.\r\n'