The Devastating Effects of Childhood Obesity

The Devastating Effects of Childhood Obesity

Obesity is the most common dietary crisis that affects many Americans including children and teenagers. Studies show that childhood obesity has increased during the past two decades. Nowadays, about 15 percent of children and adolescents are overweight (Baron and Marcus). Obesity is defined as an excessively high amount of body fat in relation to lean body mass. Obesity occurs when the percentage of body fat is greater than 30 percent for women and 25 percent for men (“Obesity”). If during childhood people are more likely to build their identity and self-confidence, what kind of negative effects obesity produce? The effects of childhood obesity are detrimental because they encompass physical, psychosocial, and psychological damage.

Most physical or health effects of being obese are similar in adults and children. However, childhood obesity has unimaginable effects such as early puberty in girls and delayed puberty in boys. Obese children are expected to develop many health problems such as high cholesterol and high blood pressure, which are related to heart disease in adults. Shalitin and Phillip describe that many of the “metabolic and cardiovascular complications” that affect adults started during childhood. Other consequences of childhood obesity are type II diabetes, obstructive sleep apnea, orthopedic problems, and skin issues such as stretch marks and plantar callus. As the childhood obesity increases, more sequels that are exclusive in children and adolescents are found. The discovery that overweight girls “tend to mature earlier than lean children” has led to the premise that the “degree of body fatness may trigger the neuroendocrine”; therefore, produce early puberty (Shalitin and Phillip). On the other hand, obese boys tend to start puberty at a later age than their lean peers. In recent studies it was demonstrated that obese boys did not show genital growth by the age of eleven or twelve; unlike,...