Childhood Obesity In America

Childhood Obesity

There are 5 issues that make a fist of a hand that can knock America out cold. They’re a lack of jobs, obesity, diabetes, homelessness, and education. Each of these factors have the ability to trigger one another, as mentioned before, without the proper level of education on how to control issues like obesity it can later lead to several types of deadly diseases. Because there is a lack of education by parents, a low amount of funds being spent on children by the government and the accessibility of unhealthy processed foods, the childhood obesity rate is high and out of control in the United States.
Without any sense of direction from parents and a lack of knowledge of what is being fed to kids today, obesity will continue
This same factor has a ripple effect on the student because it also limits them on what various types of meals they can choose during lunch hour, a poor selection of unhealthy foods leads to poor dieting. “The reimbursement rate for a reduced-price lunch is $2.17 and 24 cents for a paid meal. When you factor in labor and other school costs, schools have less than $1 per day per student to spend on food for lunch”(C.P.F.). Limiting yourself to just $1 dollar to use towards food would be nearly impossible to survive off of, let alone to eat or choose a healthy meal. This not only limits student and young adults of what they are able to eat during lunch if they cannot afford to bring their own lunch, but it also gets them into the habit of making a poor choice in food. “Fewer than 15 percent of the two million American elementary school-aged children eat the recommended five or more daily servings of fruits and vegetables" (Myrdal). If these poor eating habits continue or continue decrease, than the obesity will only continue to grow. In order for our young children of America to begin to change their unhealthy eating habits, parents and other leaders must promote healthy eating habits and explain the importance of proper dieting, which can start by cutting back on processed
“Frozen burger patties from California 's Don Lee Farms serve schoolchildren in Fairfax County, Va., and are composed of 26 different ingredients, most of them unpronounceable for the average consumer" (Zhao).We as adults must take note of what is being fed to our children during lunch because the regulations some of these schools have do not regulate some of these unknown substances. Our futures are at stake here, the young kids of today are our future and if we do not take some initiative and help them with this growing epidemic than there is no future to look forward to. Overweight children and adolescents are more likely to be overweight or obese adults and more likely to suffer early heart disease and death. (Gardener) If this problem is not solved when the kids are young, then they are not going to be healthy adults. In the United States, federal statistics estimate that 9 million adolescents (17 percent of the population) are overweight and 80 percent of overweight adolescents grow up to be obese adults. Childhood obesity rates have tripled since 1970. (Gardener) The epidemic of obesity can only be fixed if we educate the public. I also feel that this problem can be resolved by developing a new lunch program. It would be helpful if the federal government helped out. “The reimbursement rate for a reduced-price lunch is $2.17 and 24 cents for a paid meal.