Child Obesity: An Alarming Trend

Unfortunately, child obesity isn’t just un-stylish, it’s a problem, problem enough to kill. In 2002, data showed that 15% of children and teens are considered overweight, tripling since 1980. An additional 15% of kids and teens are considered “at risk” for becoming overweight.

There are ways of dealing with it though. For example, if you live where I live, Nova Scotia, Canada, you may have noticed a slight change in your selection of cafeteria goods. Now, I don’t know about your school, but mine is smart enough to realise that the school board thinks we’re fat. I was no overly pleased with their solution, because it has had no effect whatsoever in the year that it’s been in place.

One, among the many flaws in this program, would be the self esteem problem among adolescents as well. If kids realise that not only are their peers calling them fat, but the adults are too, then this could result in some depressed schools. In Canada alone, about 4000 people kill themselves every year, that’s about 11 people a day.

Another disturbing coincidence is when the school board, or mine at least, took into action this plan. If you look at the date at which they set it, late 2006, you will see the corresponding rise of school shootings around that exact same time. Funny, eh?

The above is a direct link to a timeline of school shootings that have happened since 1975, the last one being the Virginia Tech massacre. Please note the amount of incidents in 2006. I think that maybe, just maybe, the school board had more to fix then child obesity, but of course, like all leaders and governments they took the easy way out to make it look like they were actually doing something. So, thank you school board, for turning your head to the kids being shot up in their schools, to help the fat kids like myself. Maybe if it weren’t for your terrible governing skills, I wouldn’t have to comfort myself with food all the time.

Also alarming, maybe even more so then the school politics, is the parents. How do parents not notice what’s going on in their own children’s lives. I can almost understand not being a huge impact in your child’s life, or not being an amazing role-model, but not seeing you child tip the scales at 200lbs when they’re ten years old is pathetic. Further more, not noticing it is one thing, but taking no action? How can this actually happen in households? How can we fix it? We can’t, they have to themselves, and changing what they could possibly eat in the cafeteria is clearly not working.

Another tactic the school board has tried is mandatory gym class. This, in my eyes, is a very good idea, except for one major flaw. If children are already obese, but trying to give it their all in gym class and they just can’t do it, they’re still being made fun of.

There really is no cure for child obesity, except to start early. To completely cure child obesity, we have to act within our children when they’re infants, feed them healthy food and find them a sport they like. Something physical they can really do and like.