Avoiding Childhood Obesity Starts at Home

It’s of concern how often families today trust the education system to instruct their children all sorts of things other than just reading, writing and arithmetic. A lot of parents delegate the obligation for avoiding childhood obesity on the shoulders of the school board as well, thinking that gym classes and nutrition should be part of the school’s curriculum so that children can continue to be fit and healthy. This is an extremely ill-judged attitude by parents and one that is a surefire recipe for disaster. To combat childhood obesity and to keep children healthy and ablee-bodied, there must be changes made in the home first and foremost.

One of the reasons that parents cannot trust the school systems to take care of this is that many schools just cannot offer gym classes the way they once did. Schools are usually overcrowded these days so the gymnasium needs to perform as a lunch room for more hours than ever before. Without regular physical exercise, childhood obesity is an almost sure thing. And just educating a youngster about calories and fat and nutritional content of food doesn’t mean that he or she is going to avoid junk food and fast food also! Just knowing about these matters is not motivation sufficient to help a child make the choices needed to avoid childhood obesity.

A parent’s example and what goes on in the home is definitely a better indicator of whether or not childhood obesity will be avoided. Children generally learn lifestyle choices and attitudes from their parents whether they’re aware of it or not. Parents that are active and that always have activities to do will probably raise children that are active and busy as well. Those parents that lay around on the couch each evening and on the weekends may find childhood obesity a problem in their own home. This is because children are being taught to be sedentary and inactive. If a parent takes the effort to prepare meals that are simple but wholesome a child will learn to value wholesome food and to take the extra time and effort required to prepare such dishes. But when a parent is regularly falling back on drive-through meals and other poor dietary choices, a youngster may learn that such food is satisfactory. This also may increase the cases of childhood obesity in the home.

Adults too can set limits with their children while they’re with them to assist avoid childhood obesity. No one can altogether control their child when they’re on their own, but providing only nutritious meals and snacks when children are home will lessen any damage they’re doing by consuming junk at every other time! Many cases of childhood obesity are also associated to inactivity during the day and evening. With this in mind parents can plan times to go to a zoo, aquarium, or other places where everyone walks around. Other way to help stave off childhood obesity by biking, walking, playing catch, playing Frisbee, setting up a badminton net, or other activities that involve all the family members.

As a parent, you must take responsibility for the health of your child. This includes making sure that he/she gets proper nutrition along with adequate exercise. Without this, they may become oe of the many kids that are falling thru the cracks into obesity.

Obesity in Today’s World

Over 176,500 young adults under 20 years old have one form of diabetes. One in every 400 to 600 children has type one diabetes, according to the National Diabetes Statistics Web site. Diabetes is just one of obesity related health problems among children and adults. Obesity also causes other health problems such as hypertension, heart attacks and high cholesterol. In 2004 obesity related deaths ranked number two, smoking came in first. By 2005 obesity related deaths was expected to pass smoking as the number one cause of death, according to Medscape.com.

One of the reasons why obesity is on the rise is, the idea of an American family and dinner time has changed. Americans lead busy lives, in a typical family home, both parents work a forty hour week, most arriving home late. Those families would rather relax than think about making a well balanced meal for everyone. It is usually easier to pick up the phone and order carry out or a pizza. We all want to spend time with our families and watch our favorite TV program. The last thing anyone wants to think about is cooking after a long day at the office.

Often eating out is cheaper than making a home cooked meal. You can go to McDonald’s and feed a family of four for fewer than twenty dollars. It is fast, easy and cheap. To feed a family of four a balanced meal, for example chicken with rice and a vegetable, costs more in both time and money. Foster Farms offers three chicken breasts in a package for around $9.00 at a local Fred Meyer here in Oregon. You would have to buy two in order to feed a family of four. One package of Uncle Ben’s instant wild rice only has two to three servings per container for $2.50 which means again you would have to buy two packages. For a bushel of broccoli can range in price from $1.00 per pound. Once you go to the grocery store, come home and make all this food, you evening is gone and so is over twenty dollars.

Lack of health choice at restaurants makes eating right difficult. According to Foodfacts.info, in 2005 fast food chain, Wendy’s, pulled their fruit salad option after only ten months on the menu, sighting low sales. Many fast food chains have started to offer healthier choices such as Subway which offers raisins and yogurt, and Wendy’s offers mandarin orange fruit cups in place of fries. Some sit down restaurants have followed suit such as Red Robin which will allow you to order either a petite hamburger patty or a Boca Burger substitute for any of their burgers. Unfortunately other places do not offer alternatives or the alternatives are not well advertised by the prospective restaurant. Red Robin might offer a Boca patty substitution but it is in fine print which is barley visible at the very bottom of their menu.

When eating out, often you do not have control over the serving sizes. For instance at McDonald’s, e medium fry package now has nutritional facts listed on the side. It shows how many calories are in that amount of fries along with the sodium content. What they are not taking into account is the amount of salt added to the fries after cooking, and the person filling the container usually over fills. Therefore the nutritional facts and serving size information provided is inaccurate.

As adults we need to set a good example for our youths. Children see how much their parents eat and they think this is the right amount of food for them. If you are always taking your children to McDonald’s because you simply don’t want to cook all you are doing is setting them up for to then be obese. Gastric bypass surgery is the second only to breast augmentation, as the most common surgery among young adults. The time is now for us to start setting a good example for all people and start making smarter choices of food, make the effort to cook healthy meals, and rethink what a serving size is.

Weight Loss and Income Level

O besity rates among the poor reached a 147% increase in 2002 obesity according to medicinenet.com. This made those at the poverty level the fastest growing obesity group. Being obese for those at the poverty line is due to make circumstances which are out of their control. Some of the more common reasons why this group is so obese can be attributed to lack of exercise, food choices and no access to health food stores or supermarkets.

Living in government assisted housing, commonly known as “projects” is something many of the impoverished live in everyday. The projects are home to gangs, shootings, and other more serious crimes. Many children and families report this as the number one reason they do not get out an exercise. Projects often do not have playgrounds, sidewalks or lawns where families or children can play. If there is a playground near by often it is a central meeting place for gangs and gang activity, again making it a less than ideal hang out for children or individuals looking for a place to exercise.

Food stamps and other food assistance programs are available to those who need financial help. However, trying to eat healthy on food stamps is near impossible. Often those who use foods stamps have many mouths to feed and they need to stretch the money as far as it will go. The Department of Human Services suggests buy cheap staple foods. Some of which are macaroni and cheese, Cup O’Noodle and other starches such as pasta. A cheap and easy dinner might be Hamburger Helper which is extremely unhealthy but food stamp shoppers don’t care, as long as it is food in the table to feed their families.

Often poor families do not buy organic foods and other food substitutes such as Egg Beaters or tofu as they are too expensive and food stamps generally do not cover expensive items when there are other alternatives such as real eggs. Many times low income families don’t even bother with a grocery list of items as there are no grocery stores anywhere near their homes and lugging $400.00 worth of groceries on a bus alone is not easy. Many do not buy fresh fruits or vegetables since one they can not afford to buy fresh produce every week and two there is no where in the inner city to buy these items.

Large cities such as New York, Chicago or LA have health foods stores on every corner and large supermarkets going up everyday, however this is all happening in the suburbs not in the inner city. Many project tenets go grocery shopping at Circle K’s or Quickie Marts since they are close to their homes. Buying fresh vegetables and fruits, food alternatives such as Egg Beaters and tofu are not at things someone can buy at the local Circle K. Sciencedaily.com reports one of the leading reasons for obesity among the poor is lack of grocery stores in their neighborhoods. There are no farmers markets offering organic produce or health food stores with tofu, these people get what they can at corner markets.

Being poor is no reason to let your health suffer. However when it comes to trying to better yourself or become more healthy, the odds are defiantly against you if you are in the low income bracket. It has become more important then ever to take care of yourself regardless of your income level. The rising costs of health care are not going down, and by being obese you are not part of the solution.

Is Your Child On The Road to Obesity? 4 Mistakes You Can Fix Now

Take a quick look around and you’ll observe the costly obesity crisis that is slowly overtaking our nation. How bad has it become you may say? Consider the idea that we are now seeing individuals parking in handicap parking spots to avoid having to park just a few extra feet away from a building.

In all honesty, we can not totally place the blame for this on the individuals themselves. Several studies have shown that for a number of people, their chemical and genetic makeup aide in their body’s ability to process certain fats. Sure being 100 plus pounds over weight might have been good in the Ice Age but today this is simply not the case.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in looking at childhood obesity and nutrition. Nutritionists estimate that for every point of body mass index a child is overweight by before puberty, the adult that child will grow into will be three points overweight by the time they’re thirty. Type II diabetes, where body stress from overeating builds up resistance to insulin, is becoming more prevalent in teenagers.

At the ages of 12 – 16 is when most young girls and boys are self conscious about their bodies. Even “normal looking” kids get teased. If we allow our children to continue down a slippery slope toward obesity, we are setting them up for a very difficult childhood. Parents must be told that healthy eating habits and not Slimfast diet shakes or Medifast meals are the key to weight loss and a nutritious lifestyle.

On the positive side of things, I want to let you know that there is hope. There is an easy way to solve this downward trend.

Remember when you were a kid? You know, before video games like the Nintendo Wii. You actually had friends who played outside with you. You had energy and used it.

When you were thirsty, mostly you grabbed milk, sometimes orange juice, not sodas. Cookies were a treat, not a staple of your diet. Snacks were things like apple wedges or an orange, maybe some peeled carrots.

Contrary to the popular belief, it is possible to training children to eat healthy foods. Caffeine laced drinks are a prime example. Researchers have uncovered an alarming link between drinking diet sodas and consuming high fat luncheon meets with cases of certain brain cancers. If you gain nothing else from this article, at least follow this one tip, please, do not allow your kids to drink soft drinks. Remember, water first before any juices or milks.

As for snacks, limit their intake of high sugar and high fattening foods and increase their consumption of fruits and vegetables. This may not be as hard as you think. Consider this, if you kids are not of driving age and do not have a job, the only reason they are eating the way they are is because you as the parent purchase the unhealthy food in your kitchen. Trust me, if you don’t buy it, they will immediately decrease their over consumption. Oh yeah, they’ll complain however it is up to you to be the parent.

Staying physically active is an absolute necessity. Children are usually mirror images of their parents. If you as a parent live a sedentary life, the chances of your child duplicating your example are very high. If you have little league teams in your town, encourage your children to participate. Not all kids are athletic but all kids need to be active. In addition, set aside at least one day in the week where the entire family is physically active together. It could be a walk in the park or playing tag in the backyard.

The key to providing life long health for your kids is inculcating these habits early in life, so they become habits. Explain why you’re doing it when they ask, but don’t preach. Your kids will adopt the behaviors they see you doing – you’re their parent, their role model, and these are the habits they’ll stick with as they get older.

Fast Food Bank Aims to Win Over Junk Eaters

Junk food can rightfully take its place as one of the many causes of overweight and obesity, not because it’s necessarily bad, but because people, especially children, are eating it too often.

The main problem isn’t even so much the junk food itself, but the lack of time for food preparation that sees stressed parents picking up or ordering in, instead of cooking. But as Jamie Oliver says, there is really no faster “fast food” than home-prepared food, because it takes longer to go and get or wait for purchased meals than it does to throw something exciting together in your own kitchen.

As well as home-cooked meals being faster than “fast food”, they can pack a flavour punch that the junk is seriously short on. And with families under the pump with rising food costs, learning to knock up superb meals in just minutes can shred the family food bill and give the children in the family a true health advantage.

Yes, home-cooked food wins on all points – but of course you have to know how!

From small beginnings, a new Australian web site hopes to help parents world wide to gain confidence preparing fast food at home by starting a “fast food bank” where people can freely upload their own favourite healthy fast food recipes and share others.

To be included on the site each recipe must pack a great flavour punch, must be 100% healthy, and must be prepared in 30 minutes or less. Look out for “Eastern Turkey Wrap with Tabouleh” – it’ll set your taste buds zinging just reading about it!

FastFoodBank.com is part of the Kind Communities Initiative, with a mission of giving families everything they need to support individual and family health and well-being, to drive down rates of overweight, obesity, diabetes and depression and give them their lives back in an overly hectic world.

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