Junk Food and Children obesity

According to the latest statistics, over a third of our children aged two to eleven are overweight and, of those, half could be considered obese.

More likely, though, people had squarely put the blame on the parents! Because parents buy the food their children eat. There’s nothing wrong with children. Watching television and bombarded with a food advertisements everyday will make no significant effect because the real decision about children’s food choices is in the parent’s hand.

Blaming the parents is too easy. What about when the parents aren’t around - like at school? So many schools have allowed junk food in the cafeterias and parents have lost control. It isn’t so easy to command that kids not buy junk food. Anybody who knows kids, knows they will buy what they want without mom and dad around. Or other difficult situation where the both parents must work all day long in order to keep food served on the table.

Not quite, but here are a few ideas for parents

• Parents have to take the responsibility of limiting the hours kids spend watching TV.
• Don’t give money everyday to young children and teach them how to handle money.
• Cook healthy meals, encourage exercise and don’t buy the tons of junks food.
• Feed breakfast to your children at home and pack lunchbox filled with healthy food.
• Try teaching the older children expecting him/her to understand about healthy food and can pay attention to his/her brother or sister.

A new obesity study has found children are exercising more but obesity levels are still rising. Dr Michael Booth, from University of Sydney, said that the problem with overweight isn't so much that kids are inactive and need to do more exercise. Most already are quite active but the problem is primarily that they're simply eating too many calories and primarily through junk foods.

Junk food is being advertised in front of us and in front of our children. There is no better time than now to build a supportive and educative environments for nurturing our children and endowing them with a legacy of good health.