Obesity in Children: The Risks, Effects, and Mitigation Strategies (Essay Sample)

Childhood Obesity
Student’s name
Institutional affiliation
Childhood Obesity
Poor dietary and nutritional behaviors are the primary causes of mortality. They result in conditions like type 2 diabetes, strokes, coronary heart disease, and subsets of cancer. Overweight and obesity is the baseline factors that lead to these diseases (Knickman, Kovner, & Jonas, 2015). When considering diet as a behavioral risk factor, childhood obesity has a significant impact in my state of residence. However, individual efforts, population-based strategies, and environmental interventions can effectively control this problem.
Childhood obesity causes both psychological and health effects to the youth. Most of the young obese individuals have low self-esteem and have experienced stigmatization in schools. Similarly, they present cases of peripheral insulin resistance at a younger age. Consequently, these children present prediabetes or type II diabetes health conditions. On the other hand, most of the obese children have a greater likelihood of being obese in their adulthood. Thus, they have an increased risk for cardiovascular diseases (Knickman, Kovner, & Jonas, 2015).
Nutritional education for the children and their parents is the best downstream intervention strategy. As such, the children are educated to embrace healthy eating habits that minimize the risks of obesity. Such habits include eating more vegetables and fruits while reducing carbonated drinks. On the other hand, parents should provide healthy meals to their children and minimize consumption of fast foods (Scaffa & Reitz, 2014). This strategy is useful since younger children spend much time with their parents in their homes.
School-based education and physical activity provide an efficient midstream intervention because schools have learning and physical health programs. That is, children should have sufficient facilities for playing while in school as well as learning healthy dietary practices (Centre of Disease Control (CDC), 2016). On the other hand, regulation of the school environment to regulate food and beverage environment can effectively provide an upstream strategy. As such, children are limited to healthy meals developing a culture of healthy eating (CDC, 2016). This intervention will be effective because children are allowed to purchase some food in schools and can adopt practices of consuming hea