Shaunda Harris

What is Obesity

Obesity refers to an excess of fatty tissue on a person’s body. When someone is obese, their mortality is increased and they are at risk for a number of diseases. Overweight people have an excess of fat as well, but their risk is slightly lower then those who are obese. Obesity is mainly the result of not maintaining a healthy lifestyle, but genetics medical conditions and social factors may also be factors. And overweight is the excess amount of body weight that includes muscle, bone, fat and water.

What causes obesity the causes of obesity are complex and include genetic, biological, behavioral and cultural factors? Basically, obesity occurs when a person eats more calories than the body burns up. If one parent is obese, there is a 50 percent chance that the children will also be obese. However, when both parents are obese, the children have an 80 percent chance of being obese. Although certain medical disorders can cause obesity, less than 1 percent of all obesity is caused by physical problems.

The problem of childhood obesity in the United States has grown in recent years. Between 16 and 33 percent of children and adolescents are obese. Obesity is among the easiest medical conditions to recognize but most difficult to treat. Unhealthy weight gain due to poor diet and lack of exercise is responsible for over 300,000 deaths each year. The annual cost to society for obesity is estimated at nearly $100 billion. Overweight children are much more likely to become overweight adults unless they adopt and maintain healthier patterns of eating and exercise. Changes in the Western lifestyle have led to significant reductions in energy of children and have encouraged "super-sizing" of calorie-dense, high-fat foods and snacks.

A US Surgeon General's report on fitness says that nearly half of young people ages 12 to 21 are not vigorously active. They have "junk" food diets. There has been a sever increase in television watching accompanied by snacking, increased time playing video and computer games all contribute to increased obesity among the young. If we start to think of some major problems facing pediatrics in the next millennium, I think obesity has to be among the most serious, with all the adverse health implications that obesity
Carries.

The incidence of overweight and obese 6 to 11-year-olds has increased from 4 to 15 percent in the past 40 years. A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows that the number of overweight children between ages 2 and 5 has soared 40 percent during the past decade alone. The problem is more severe in California. More than 3 million children are overweight or at risk for obesity, that number tripled on the 70’s. Almost half of the children in the California state Assembly districts and 40 percent of children flunked the basic aerobic fitness test. New products are popping up on the market claiming to prevent children from becoming obese by treating symptoms rather than causes. It "allow’s children to enjoy their favorite foods without gaining weight," there is an ad for chewable berry-flavored tablets named Pedia Loss, an appetite suppressant. It cost $79.99. A proper diet and exercise program can keep your child from becoming a statistic. Lack of physical activity is a large contributor to this problem. Physical education, once an important part of a child's school day, has been cut back at many schools. Less than half of U.S. schoolchildren have access to daily physical education classes. Dietz in his study also found that the issue of obesity increased by 2% for every additional hour of television watched. In another study of preschoolers ages 1-4 a child's risk of being overweight increased by 6% for every hour of television watched. If that child had a TV in his or her bedroom, the odds of being overweight jumped an additional 31% for each hour watched. Preschool children with TVs in their bedroom watched an