Crisis In America: Overcoming Childhood Obesity

Childhood Obesity

In the past year, children’s diets and eating habits have rarely been out of the headlines. America’s #1 Personal Trainer and Weight Loss Guru Richard Hackworth looks at the size of the child obesity problem and gives parents some top tips for keeping their children healthy and in great shape.

The Shocking Facts

Childhood obesity is big news and unfortunately, like the waistbands of our nation's children and teenagers, its set to get even bigger.

Childhood Obesity Statistics

Statistics from the most recent large-scale survey in the US shockingly reveal that 25 percent of boys and 33 percent of girls aged between two and 19 years are overweight or obese – and there’s little sign the incidence is slowing.

Obesity currently costs the country around $12 billion annually and shortens lives by nine years, due to the associated health problems. Some health experts even believe we’ll soon see parents outliving their children. Because many of today’s parents have shirked their responsibility of properly raising their children and let them just eat whatever fattening foods they want as long as they will not argue with the parents. This child neglect on the part of the parents has created a national health epidemic.

Equally worrying is the fact that parents are getting so used to seeing overweight kids, they don’t recognize their own children are dangerously obese.

Last year, a study from the Peninsula Medical School in Plymouth, revealed that:

• Three quarters of parents failed to recognize their child was overweight.
• 33 percent of moms and 57 percent of dads considered their child’s weight to be "about right" when, in fact, they were obese.
• One in ten parents expressed some concern about their child being underweight when they were actually a normal, healthy weight.

Risks of Obesity in Children

Health experts are particularly worried about this in view of the health risks linked with obesity, which include heart disease, certain cancers, high blood pressure, joint problems, psychological difficulties and diabetes.

An American study in the 90's showed that overweight teenagers were eight and a half times more likely to develop high blood pressure and almost 2 and a half times as likely to have high blood cholesterol levels. Thirty three thousand high school age students suffered severe heart attacks while trying to perform a normal task such as playing a team sport, riding a bike for 2 miles or walking 1 mile.

Meanwhile, in recent years there;s been an alarming rise in the number of children being diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, a condition that's typically seen in overweight middle aged adults.

The Childhood Diabetes Foundation believes there are currently around 100,000 children with Type 2 diabetes, although some experts believe the figure could be as high as 1,400,000 based on the number of overweight and obese school children there are in the USA. Experts relate this solely to the increase in childhood obesity and the fact that so many of these children go undiagnosed because of their sedentary lifestyle and many parents just write off their inactivity as just being lazy.