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Essay / The roles of parents, schools and the media in childhood obesity
Humans have progressed in life thanks to new inventions and technologies. However, one problem that tends to arise in many communities is childhood obesity. Childhood obesity is a medical condition that affects children and adolescents, with 60% of children in Canada being obese. Parents, school and lack of physical activity all contribute significantly to childhood obesity, causing them to suffer physically and mentally. In Canada, childhood obesity has become an epidemic and, essentially, a growing disease. Over the past 30 years, childhood obesity has more than tripled. This leads us to understand how childhood obesity has become a major problem today. To understand the impact of obesity and why we should avoid it, there are many causes and contributions to obesity. However, as children grow older, it becomes more difficult to combat obesity. In this essay, I will discuss the role of parents, schools, and the media in contributing to childhood obesity. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”? Get an original essay “Childhood obesity starts at home and is best tackled at home through better parental involvement, activity increased physical fitness and better nutrition,” it was once said. by the famous philosopher Bob Filner. This quote refers to how children often see their parents as role models, as many young children want to be like their mother or father. Although this may seem nice, it is not always good. No one is perfect, which means children pick up both good and bad habits from their parents. Additionally, this is linked to childhood obesity because children tend to eat what their parents eat. Researchers found that if parents eat at least five servings of fruits and vegetables a day, their children are likely to do so as well. Contrary to this, parents who eat fast food or drink soda tend to affect their children. Statistics show that a child whose parents drink soda daily is nearly 40 percent more likely to drink soda daily themselves than a child whose parents do not drink soda. Additionally, poor parental habits are not the only contribution to childhood obesity. Many parents have busy lives and work hard long hours a day to ensure a better future for their children. This results in parents not paying much attention to their children, which often leads to not serving them proper food. For this reason, parents buy fast food for their children because they are too lazy to cook for their children. However, this is not the only reason why childhood obesity is a problem. Like parents, schools play an important role in the problem of childhood obesity. Schools around the world serve food in cafeterias for breakfast and lunch. However, several studies show that schools sell unhealthy foods that are popular among students, making many schools a vital source of revenue. Schools are responsible for the increasing number of obese children, since children consume 50% of their daily food intake at school, which often means that 50% of the foods children eat on school days are unhealthy and are behind the increase in obesityinfantile. Additionally, cafeteria food is often mass-produced and cheap, costing the school $1.30 per child. Cheap food contains high levels of sugar and unhealthy carbohydrates. More than 30 million students eat school meals, and 14 million eat school breakfasts. Thirty percent of high schools benefit from competitive food sales generating more than $125,000 per school. As we all know, food plays an important role in everyone's life. Since children spend a third of their day at school, food is essential to keeping their minds sharp. Schools need to pay more attention to students' nutrition. For this reason, schools today play a key role in the role of childhood obesity. In addition, fast food restaurants and the media play one of the most important roles in the fight against obesity. Fast food restaurants spend millions of dollars on television ads aimed at children. Recently, a wider variety of food products have been sold to children as merchandising passes featuring famous TV and film characters. Some examples of this include Marshmallow Cereal, SpongeBob Cheez-its and Scooby-Doo. Fast food restaurants also frequently use pass promotion with media characters aimed at children. Like McDonald's and Disney, Happy Meals are made up of toys from the best Disney films. Happy Meals include toys from popular Disney brands with figures from the Ironman movement or princess dolls aimed at young boys and girls. A study showed that one in six meal advertisements aimed at young people promise a bulk toy. Many advertisements also use cool animated movie characters to sell products to children, which research has proven to be effective when focusing on children. Additionally, the food served at these fast food restaurants is mostly artificially created with lots of unhealthy calories and nutrients, thus contributing to the rise in childhood obesity. Obese children face many challenges in daily life. Many obese children are affected both physically and mentally. Obese children have difficulty keeping up with children who are not obese. When children go out during lunch or to parks after school to play sports, obese children have a harder time running and playing with other children. Due to the fact that they do not get good nutrients for energy, they instead eat fatty foods which add to their weight, making it difficult for them to participate in physical activity. Many obese children are constantly bullied. Obese children often face verbal bullying, which is the most common type of bullying toward obese children, including hurtful comments and name-calling at school. In this article he shows proof of the problem, with statistics discussing a national survey of obese sixth graders, 24 percent of boys and 30 percent of girls experience verbal bullying on a daily basis. In conclusion, parents, schools and the media have a great influence. on the increase in childhood obesity. Parents do not pay attention to what their children eat and often instill bad habits in them. Most schools use cafeteria food to generate revenue by serving unhealthy and cheap food to maximize their profits, which really affects