Middle Childhood Obesity (Essay Sample)

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Middle Childhood Obesity
Obesity is a health disorder that makes the body to accumulate excess body fat which may be detrimental to an individual’s health. This health disorder has become prevalent to people in the world in current times. The condition is mainly caused by the sedentary lifestyle which has been assimilated by most individuals in the world. In Canada, school going children have also not been left behind. Statistics suggest that about 18.4% of children aged 6 to 11 years are obese. This paper is going to discuss the issues that are related to middle childhood obesity among Canadian children.
The rise of obesity in children has been majorly contributed by the current lifestyles. These lifestyles include eating of processed foods (Roblin 635). Most of these processed foods have very high calories. These calories are contributed by sugar, sodium, and trans-fats which have high energy contents. The body cannot be able to use up all the energy that is found in processed foods. The extra energy is converted to fats which are stored in the body. Most children buy processed foods because they are packaged and readily available in many food outlets and store. In addition, most of the processed foods are sweet and can be eaten within a short time. Moreover, most children at home are given beverages which are sweetened with sugars making them add more calories (Roblin 635). Similarly, processed foods are usually cheaper in comparison to foods which are unprocessed making children to prefer purchasing them. Therefore these foods are favorites to school children making them be overweight.
Similarly, the current lifestyle of most children has been characterized by lack of physical activity. In the past, most children used to go and play outdoors making them to use most of the energy obtained from food. Therefore, they were able to maintain healthy weights. However, most children in current times prefer to stay indoors and watch television or play video games and make use of computers. Therefore the food they eat is converted into body fat making them grow more obese (Hales and Lara 140). Moreover, most children travel to school and back using vehicles or school buses. Therefore, most of them lose the benefits of walking while commuting to school or back.
Obesity affects the physical development of children. In most cases, most children who are overweight grow into adults who are overweight. In addition, children who are obese are exposed at an early age of contracting cardiovascular diseases such as high blood pressure due to high level of cholesterol in the body. They may also risk having the type 2 form of diabetes (Hales and Lara 140). They may also develop breathing problems when asleep and asthma. Moreover, children who are obese may develop a non-alcoholic fatty liver disease which may damage the liver (Sahoo, et al. 187). Likewise, children who are obese may find it hard to involve themselves in physical activities such as sports in school due to their heavy weight. Additionally, some of the children may try to make efforts to reduce their weight. This could involve eating smaller amounts of food, skipping some meals and totally avoiding some meals. These could further deteriorate their health due to unhealthy eating habits and poor nutrition.
Moreover, most children who have obesity develop negative emotions. Most of them develop low self-esteem because they tend to believe that being overweight makes reduces the chances of being liked by their peers. This makes most of them have low self-confidence. In addition, they may develop a distorted image of themselves and therefore feel shameful about their bodies (Sahoo, et al. 187). Moreover, most of them may develop loneliness, stress and depression because of harboring feelings of being outcasts. Similarly, some of them may involve themselves in emotional eating leading them to eat excess food which would further increase their body weight. Furthermore, those children may experience emotional outbursts which make them display a lot of aggressiveness upon other people.
Additionally, most children who are obese undergo a lot of social challenges as they develop. For instance, most of them are avoided by their peers because of being overweight and result in a lot of loneliness. Obese children also undergo a lot of bullying in school. For example, some of them are called insulting names or teased on grounds of their body weight (Sahoo, et al. 187). Their peers might also act in a cruel manner. Moreover, most of them are overlooked when there is a selection of sports teams in school and are often be picked as the last person. In addition, overweight children undergo a lot of discrimination. They are likely to have lower chances of getting dating partners in the future or getting employed. Therefore, most of them may result to have poor social skills because they hardly socialize with their peers. For instance, they might display low assertiveness in comparison to their peers who have healthy body weight.
First, the government of Canada has put a ban on advertisements of fast foods which target children (Raine 239). This will lower the probability of children being influenced to buy junk food. In addition, schools in Canada have banned sales of sweets, chocolates and snacked which are deep fried within their compounds. This has reduced the instance of school children buying junk food in school. Moreover, the government intends to add more tax to processed food to discourage its sales to the Canadian population. In addition, a policy is being made of using st