Do You Recognize And Address the Childhood Obesity Problem?

Has anybody noticed how everything lately is about being overweight or obese? Most people today do not realize that obesity begins in childhood and very commonly starts when the child is just an infant. Doctors today expect a six month old child to weigh about 20 pounds when just a couple years ago, they were good to go if they were at least 12. Why has the weight standard changed so drastically for infants, while the rest of the world is ridiculed for weighing just about the same difference? Who makes these standards for children, but yet says that it’s not okay once they hit a certain age?

It seems that every year there is a new standard for “physical fitness,” but yet every year that standard just makes people more and more unhealthy. The full truth of the matter is that people were the most healthy in about the 70′s and 80′s. Even the runway models had a little meat on their bones. It’s as if society is the professional who chooses what physical fitness truly is. It’s no longer a standard of how much cardio endurance you can handle, it’s how far your ribs stick out.

With the everyday tortures of being a child and a teenage, life can go one of two ways; up or down. Even though most childhood eating disorders begin in the home; either because in some way or another the child learns to use food as a comfort or because the child is never taught proper eating habits. Today’s schools do not help when it comes to maintaining a proper balance of nutrition nor do they offer the availability of everything needed most of the time. Not only are schools found to have a poor variety for nutrition, but they are also responsible for a lot of the body image issues that just about 80% of kids today suffer from. However, body image issues cannot be directly blamed on the school even though they are aware of what takes place in their classrooms and in their hallways. The other children and the media are responsible for the body image issues that are so common in today’s society.

If the schools can take a full attack on the issues that face their students today, there wouldn’t be as many drop outs or teenage pregnancies because the child doesn’t feel that they’re good enough to perform without having to fall into the clich