The Status Quo of Childhood Obesity
Junrui Chen
University of Southern California
USC Language Academy IPPAM Reading and Writing
Dr. Heather Robertson
December 4, 2013

The status quo of childhood obesity
Today, childhood obesity has become one of the most important health threats all over the world, especially in the United States. According to the CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention), the number of children obesity increases rapidly in the past 30 years (CDC, 2013a). Childhood obesity can lead to high blood pressure and high cholesterol; these risk factors are likely to cause cardiovascular disease. About 70 percent of obese children have a cardiovascular disease risk, and 39 percent of them have two or more cardiovascular disease risks in the United States (CDC, 2012). Obese children in addition to physiological disease may also have some psychological disease, which are poor self-esteem and discrimination from the social, these psychological diseases will be accompanied by their growth. Obese children with growth likely to be obese adults, this will bring them more disease (CDC, 2012). Childhood obesity has become a severe health problem, the government, schools and parents need to pay more attention to how to reduce childhood obesity and to help obese children lose weight.
There are many determinants that can cause obesity in children, which is from family and school determinants is the most important. According to the CDC, The main cause of childhood obesity are that children are lack of enough time to take exercise, a large number of unhealthy foods on campus for the children to eat and low-income families lack of enough money to buy health food for children (CDC, 2013c). The government and schools need to modify the relevant policies and parents should take adapt nutrition diet for children to help solve the problem of childhood obesity.

Policies
The government, school, and parents lack enough attention to childhood obesity, which directly result in a high increase in childhood obesity. First of all, the new foods are more delicious than any other time in the past, people are more curious to try new food (CDC, 2013c). However, the government does not provide some explicit messages about how to feed children in health. For instant, from the period before the child is born, mothers are not sure what kinds of food are suitable to the growing baby (CDC, 2013c). Sometimes, the mothers consume overall nutrients so as to lead the new-born baby overweight. The same situations are also happened while feeding infants and toddlers (CDC, 2013c). Moreover, children are exposed to a multitude of unhealthful foods ones them are over 2 years old since food is a heavily promoted commercial products Advertisements are aimed at children who can not control their desires for sweet food, such as candy, mints cookies, nuts and other salty snacks (CDC, 2013c). When children enter middle school, some unhealthy foods are strongly associated with campus activities, holidays and parties. Meanwhile, these unhealthy foods are also available easily every day in school (CDC, 2013c). Besides, parents are the targets as well. Television advertisements advocate that giving sweets to children is the way to make children happy and show the love to children. Therefore, parents are persuaded by the advertisements to please their children with special food treats.
Secondly, schools play a significant role to prevent children obesity. In the past, a lot of fast food in the campus restaurant, the schools are not to limit, this is result in many students eat more fast food (CDC, 2013c). However, the fast food is not only the lack of adequate nutrition also have high calories. After children eat, they can not get enough nutrition to help their healthy growth. On the contrary, it is likely to cause obesity. Also, a lot of carbonated drinks sold in vending machines, which is one of the causes of