Causes of Obesity Among Young Children

Nowadays, obesity starts from young age. According to World Health Organization, obesity is a medical condition in which excess body fat has accumulated to the extent that it may have an adverse effect on health. Body mass index (BMI), a measurement which compares weight and height, defines people as overweight (pre-obese) if their BMI is between 25 and 30 kg/m2, and obese when it is greater than 30 kg/m2. Obesity among young children is caused by lacking of activities, genetic and family patterns of behavior, and bad eating habits.

First, young children are lacking of physical activities. Stork (2009) asserts that lack of activity can causes a child to be obese. Youngsters now spend far more time on computer for facebook or playing online games than getting involved in outside activities such as sports. They lack of interest in leisure activities after school and do not like to go for exercise. Nowadays, sports like swimming, cycling and tennis are replaced by iPad, iPhone, PS3, Macbook and Wii 2. We even can play tennis game in Nintendo Wii 2. Sedentary lifestyle is one of the causes of obesity. Young people spend too much time in front of computer and television without being active.

Second, genetic and family patterns of behavior are also the causes of children obesity. Shah (2008) proposes that chemical or hormonal imbalances are the causes of obesity. Teen undergoes significant hormonal changes when puberty, which could lead to cravings for certain foods or food consumption to reach. In addition, obese parents often have poor eating habits. They have inappropriate dinner and pay little attention to breakfast and lunch, but always eat a lot of rich foods at dinner. At night, we need to consume less food because our body does not need too much energy at this time. Obese parents usually tolerate the poor eating habits of obese children, so their children love to consume fast food which is not healthy at all. Usually parents will tolerate this because...