Childhood Obesity
... be argued that the children and their parents are to blame. Do parents do enough to encourage a healthy diet and do the children eat the wrong things? One of the first points of consideration is the role of the media and the government. Powerful companies are also at fault. They use tactical advertising in order to sell junk food to young people. They often advertise products during children’s TV shows and use celebrities to help promote their products. In spite of protestations of innocence from the companies and advertisers, the foods standards watchdog has proven that in fact, advertising does influence what children eat as well as their preferred brands. This shows that if large companies weren’t so selfish and stopped aiming their promotions at children, their diet could be improved. Other powerful companies such as large fast food chains often advertise ‘junk’ food containing free toys clearly trying to take advantage of young children in order to improve business. It is shocking that so many companies try to influence young children into buying unhealthy products. Childhood obesity is a huge problem in our society today and various things contribute towards it. The government is often criticised for not providing enough education on the causes and effects of obesity. Surely schools should be the perfect place to enforce a number of educational schemes on the subject. However, from current evidence, not a lot is being done in schools to help with the problem. This is something the government has to address. However there is a limit to parental control and children are going to inevitably make their own decisions on food and exercise. Also, with so much new technology in our society today, parents will always have difficulty prising their children from the grip of their computer games and television sets. Children seem to enjoy the unsociable house bound activities more than the activities involving exercise and outdoors, which, again, has an effect on their health and can lead to obesity. According to researchers, child nutrition in the 1950’s was superior to today. Children from the 2950’s drank fewer soft drinks and ate fewer sweets, obtaining less of their energy form sugar. Furthermore, researchers claim that modern children lead less active lifestyles. This all adds up to poorer health and contributes heavily to the current problem of obesity. It is clear from these described difference...