"Epidemic", "alarming", "disturbing", and countless other words of similar nature are often used when describing childhood obesity in developed and developing countries.  Subhranshu Sekhar Kar from the United Arab Emirates Department of Pediatrics and lead author of the academic journal Titled Childhood Obesity-An Insight Into Preventive Strategies, along with Rajani Dube and Sitanshu Sitanshu Kar from the Department of Preventive and Social Medicine, introduce their topic by saying, "Childhood obesity in developed as well as developing countries has now reached epidemic levels" (Kar 88).  From the first sentence, the reader should detect the authors' serious attitude toward the topic of Childhood Obesity.  This tone is also found in former Commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Thomas A. Farley, MD, MH along with Deborah Dowell, MD, MPH article Preventing Childhood Obesity: What Are We Doing Right?  Undeniably the words stated at the start of this essay begin to depict a serious tone to a tremendous crisis.  Comparing and contrasting these essays will give insight into better understanding how to address and ultimately create progressive change regarding this issue.

In summary both of these essays are scientific journal articles that consist of many outside sources and statistics along with the authors' input in the form of analysis and propositions.  Kar's writing is set up in a specific way so that the reader gains an understanding of the problem, and then possible ways to prevent it through the authors' opinions.  The article starts off by introducing the topic and its severity, and then advances to a more in-depth description of the problem behind childhood obesity.  After that the authors bounce around many different ideas, following a pattern of proposing a reason, using outside sources to enhance their point, and lastly stating a brief policy to possibly fix that problem.  This pattern goes on for multiple different causes that contribute to childhood obesity and is the bulk of the writing.  The article is wrapped up with a brief conclusion that reinforces to the reader the severity of this problem.

Farley and Dowell's article conveys a similar serious tone throughout the writing, but focuses more on explaining the situation, rather than proposing solutions.  This journal entry looks at data from 2003 until 2011 and interprets it via the authors' explanations.  The article starts by explaining the numbers and the trends that actually show a decrease in New York, which is where different policies were implemented to address the problem.  The authors then go through some possible explanations for the progressive trends, but never give an explicit confirmation of the success of one of these policies.  Just as the other article, this considers multiple different possible implementations to fix the problem, but for the most part, the authors just summarize the numbers.  The writing is concluded with a couple of paragraphs stating the authors' opinion that although the recent statistics do show improvement, further exploitation of the problem through media along with continued enforcement of policies is needed to keep the positive trend going.

 The response to the exigency of childhood obesity is delved into by both of these essays.  This problem can be broken up into three parts when considering creating change through writing; one being depicting the seriousness of the problem, two being analyzing the situation, and three being proposing a solution.  These three things all relate to the exigency of childhood obesity, and are all covered in these journals.  Just reading the title of Farley and Dowell's article Preventing Childhood Obesity: What Are We Doing Right? Implants an idea of analysis in the readers mind.  The article rightly does what this title implies.  The journal for the most part explains the exigency in the specific case of data from New York City.  The goals of the authors is to make the readers aware as best as possible of the problem by making the numbers easy to accurately understand.  Once that is done they do go on to propose their own opinions, most of which directly relates to the explanation of data previously stated.  The authors write in their conclusion, "The experience in NYC suggests, without providing definitive guidance, ways to accelerate the declines in childhood obesity seen so far...Sustained improvements in obesity rates across the entire age spectrum will require continued media attention and policy change to support healthier choices for everyone" (Farley 1582).  Essentially the idea they convey here is that for this noted success to be continued and even seen in other areas, continued exploitation of the problem is needed to encourage continued change.

This way of approaching the exigency of childhood obesity is not seen in Kar's writing.  Rather than taking the approach of explaining the numbers and interpreting them in a mild way, the authors of Childhood Obesity-An Insight Into Preventive Strategies focus more on explaining the reasons behind the problem and proposing their own policies to fix them.  This process of summarizing a reasoning, and then proposing a solution is seen multiple times throughout the essay.  An example of this is the authors' explanation of how lack of physical activity along with too much indoor leisure contributes to the problem (Kar 89).  Then the authors propose a solution writing, "Reducing sedentary activities is a particularly important target for intervention and should be incorporated into any clinical approaches toward obesity treatment and prevention" (Kar 89).  Although this approach seems more direct to solving this problem, both ways of approaching this exigency as seen in these essays successfully contribute to the reader having an enhanced view of how to help this problem.

In comparing and contrasting the uses of extrinsic proofs the reader will notice the same trend prevails.  Kar and his team use extrinsic proofs in the form of data and other public health articles to lay the foreground for their own argument and enhance their points.  An example of this is first is seen when they explain how surveys reveal trends of excessive watching of television by the United States teenage and adolescent age group.  They then in the next paragraph, propose their first policy point of the article, being the opinion that reducing the amount of daily sedentary activities in children is paramount in seeing change in the current obesity trends (Kar 89).  An example using the proofs as enhancements can be found when they are talking about obesity preventative methods, they write, "In a study in the Boston area, parents who received health and fitness report cards were almost twice as likely to know or acknowledge that their child was actually overweight than those parents who did not receive a report card (Kar 91).  Rather than using extrinsic proofs in such a way as seen by Kar, Farley and Dowell use extrinsic proofs in the form of statistics from scientific surveys as the basis of their writing.  The bulk of their paper is analysis of these statistics, interpreting them into reasonable conclusions rather than using them to form policies.  In their journal they consider all of the following explanations for childhood obesity trends: demographics, food packaging, day care changes, school changes, citywide obesity prevention efforts, changes in breastfeeding, and changes in media messages, and in all of those they used statistics as basis for their summary.  In doing so they never suggested one cause as being more significant as another, nor did they say that statistics were definitive.  Farley and Dowell used these proofs to show that the efforts made thus far have made an impact, but even so no certain change has resulted in drastic reduction in childhood obesity, thus the efforts must continue.  They write, "Despite some recent signs of progress among children, obesity in both children and adults is still a substantial problem in NYC, in the United States, and globally...Sustained improvement in obesity rates across the entire age spectrum will require continued media attention and policy change to support healthier choices for everyone" (Farley 1582).

In review of these journals, it can be observed how even when the objectivity of rhetoric is the same, the approach to accomplishing that goal can vary greatly.  Kar and his co-authors have a goal to ultimately help the problem of childhood obesity, and they use their journal as a way to propose different policies on how this can happen.  Farley and Dowell also have the objective of reducing this problem, but approach it in a different way.  They choose to enlighten their audience with facts and analysis, with the hopes that knowledge is the best starting point to change.  Both essays are well organized and develop nicely into easy to read informative articles that I perceived to have accomplished the authors' set goals.  In preparation for my own paper of policy I have found that extrinsic proofs regardless of ones' own resume is essential in forming an argument.  These papers have also confirmed in my mind some of my own ideas in how to create change, and I look forward to delving deeper into these preventative methods for reducing childhood obesity.
