Childhood obesity has been around for as long as people can remember.  There have always been overweight children in the world, and it seemed like it was never a problem.  Today, childhood obesity is so prevalent because the public doesn’t understand the dangers of the disease and the treatments for it aren’t effective.  As history progressed into today, obesity has been talked about much more.  Decades ago, fat children were just ridiculed, which regular people thought was the only harm of being overweight.  After years of studies, it is known that obesity is dangerous to the child in numerous way and is a serious problem.  Despite the dangers of obesity, obesity is rising rapidly with no signs of slowing down.  Part of the problem are the treatment methods involved in treating obesity.  The methods that are currently in place are expensive and sometimes don’t help children over time.  To fix the obesity problem among children, new methods need to be found to help the children cure themselves.  The cure must help all factors of obesity in order to succeed in stopping the increasing rates of childhood obesity.

To answer the thesis, childhood obesity must be defined for the reader since there are many misunderstandings.  Jessica Firger explains on CBS News what qualifies to be obese when she said, “overweight was defined as children with a body mass index (BMI) in the 85th percentile for age and gender, while obesity was defined as greater than or equal to the 95th percentile” (Firger par. 7).  A body mass index is the best way to measure obesity among people.  By using just weight, the measurements could miss the true reflection of the patient because it doesn’t account for the content, such as muscle and bones.  A Body Mass Index helps identify the amount of body fat on the person.  Many also think that overweight is the same thing as obesity.  Obesity is an extreme form of being overweight.  Being overweight isn’t as dangerous as being obese.  Also, in order to be diagnosed with childhood obesity, the patient must be under the age of 19 to qualify.

To fully discuss the dangers involved with childhood obesity, the reader must understand what it means.  In this paper, I am referring to danger as both long term and short term.  A danger might not harm a child immediately, but could still be considered a danger because the potential long-term effect.  Also, a danger doesn’t have to be physical, but it could be psychological.  A danger is best defined for this paper as anything that can cause harm to the person who has childhood obesity.

Childhood obesity isn’t a new concept, but it is becoming more pertinent in society.  At one time, being an obese child was very rare and was looked as a positive.  Many people wanted their child to be fat because the thought was that ‘a fat child is a happy child’.  In 1896, a 9-year-old child named Charley Bilcher weighed 174 pounds.  He became a celebrity because he was in all of the newspapers.  He and his parents were proud with his size and many didn’t think much about the negative effects of it.  In fact, doctors thought that “a degree of plumpness in children was… attractive and beneficial,” and that it “protected children from infectious disease” (Dawes 2).  Around the 1920’s, doctors started to suspect that overweight children are actually less healthy because of the stress placed on their hearts and lungs, but still believed that the major problem with obese children are the teasing and other social problems that they faced from other children.  By the 1960s, they realized the dangers involved with obesity and realized that it should be treated.  The doctors “prescribed amphetamine diet pills” to help children lose the weight for medical reasons rather than social reasons (Dawes 2).  Although the medical understanding and public opinion have changed about childhood obesity, the condition has grown and continues to grow today.

Childhood obesity is growing at a large rate, which is concerning for the entire public.  A study was completed where “14 years of data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey of 26,690 children aged 2 to 19” was used to determine the state of childhood obesity (Firger par. 2).  This study found that along with normal obesity rising among children, severe obesity is rising greatly.  Obesity is grouped by three classes, where class 3 is the most severe.  An example of the classes is if a “10 year old boy is 4.5 feet tall and weighs 95 pounds would be considered obese. At 115 pounds, he would… be class 2 obesity and at 130 pounds he would…be class 3 obesity” (Firger par. 7).  There is a greater increase of obesity among specific ethnic groups.  Obesity has highest increase rates with Hispanic females and black males.  With obesity rising, it is time to help cure children of it.

Even though most people would want to cure childhood obesity, a group believes that the problem should be left alone altogether.  The group is named “Healthy at any Size”.  The group believes that the focus of trying to cure obesity is actually hurting the youth more than helping it.  They believe that the targeting of fat children as ‘unhealthy’ has left a stigma towards overweight people that creates a negative psychological effect that is worse than the physical damages that occur.  They claim that “fighting fat hasn’t made the fat go away. And being thinner… will not necessarily make us healthier or happier. The war on obesity has taken its toll” (HAES par. 1).  The ‘war’ on obesity that they mentioned caused “collateral damage,” such as “food and body preoccupation, self-hatred, eating disorders, discrimination, poor health, etc.” (HAES par. 2).  They believe that the emphasis on losing weight and weight standards contribute to other societal problems, such as gender identification.  An example of this is used with a transgender and butch woman named Bergman, who is 275 pounds, who identifies as “male about 2/3 of the time and as female 1/3 of the time” (Abigail 18).  As a male, Bergman is able to wear popular clothing brands and “order extra salad dressing or ice cream… in a restaurant and have it arrive without comment” (Abigail 18).  As a 275 pound male, Bergman could fit in with the rest of the world.  No one pays attention to Bergman as a large male, but as a 275 pound female, everything changes for the worse.  She says that as a female, she cannot order a Coke without getting diet, ask for butter at a restaurant, and go shopping without “packs of boys follow(ing) me; mooing” (Abigail 18).  Also, everyone asks her if they could help her lose weight as a woman when no one really cares about the weight as a man.  This is what Healthy at all Sizes means when discussing the damages caused by the ‘war on obesity’.

Childhood obesity is dangerous for the child’s health in both the long term as well as the present.  Being obese as a child leads to future health problems such as Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, cholesterol, metabolic syndrome, stroke, cancer, heart disease, and many others.  A study completed by the American Academy of Pediatrics shows that the “lifetime cost of medical care for an obese child is $19,000 more than the cost of care for a child of healthy weight” (Firger par. 12).  Other than physical dangers down the road, there are a lot of psychological effects of childhood obesity.  Obesity hurts the patients’ quality of life, contributing to “depression, disability, sexual problems, shame and guilt, social isolation, and lower work achievement” (Mayo Clinic Staff 5).  In obese children, it is found that they have high body image concerns and to counter it, they “engage in unhealthy weight control behaviors” which includes fasting, skipping meals, vomiting, using diet pills, and laxatives.  These behaviors could hurt the child.  Also, obese children are prone to teasing and bullying, which leads to low self-esteem and suicidal thoughts.  

The cause of childhood obesity includes many different factors.  Most people believe that it is only made up of a poor diet and a lack of exercise for the child, which is true.  These two factors create obese children, but there are many different factors that cause this, including psychological and socioeconomically factors.  As discussed before, obese children were rare in the 19th century and earlier to the point that they became celebrities.  Parents wanted their children to be overweight.  Other than the health benefits that doctors and parents thought it had back then, an obese child was a sign that the family was wealthy.  Many families couldn’t afford to feed their children an excess to the point that they would become overweight.  In today’s society, there has been a change.  Poverty stricken environments have been prone to more obesity.  The societal factors that often cause obesity are “an environment of fast food… poverty and poor education, parental failure… and rampant marketing targeted at children” (Dawes 3).  This environment is a city, where poverty is present.  Inner-city children are prone to obesity because of the availability of fast food that is cheaper than healthy food.  When on a tight budget, it is much easier to eat at a Burger King, which has offers chicken nuggets for $1.49, then to buy fresh food for more money and cook.  Also, in cities, children see advertisements everywhere for fast food.  Advertisements are used to take advantage of children and help drive them towards an unhealthy lifestyle.  It isn’t a coincidence that the rising rate of obesity among children is correlated with the greater amount of time spent in front of media, which includes computers, televisions, and video games.  Children are in front of a screen for about an average of 44.5 hours per week, and in this time they are exposed to numerous advertisements, especially for unhealthy foods and fast food chains.  These companies are purposely focusing on children for a reason, which is because they are vulnerable to the advertisements.  Many adults understand the persuasive nature of these advertisements, but “most children under age 6 cannot distinguish between programming and advertising and children under age 8 do not understand the persuasive intent of advertising” (APA par. 2).  This is a problem because not only do they not understand the purpose of the advertisements, but they “have a remarkable ability to recall content from the ads” (APA par. 2).  The companies rely heavily on the children to make their parents buy their products, so they buy 50 percent of the commercials on children’s shows.  This is causing a large amount of childhood obesity, so the advertisement of fast food should be regulated.  The tobacco industry has been regulated in the past and it has been successful, resulting in less teenage smokers.  If similar legislation is passed for fast food, like limiting the advertisement on programs meant for children, the percentage of children eating regularly at fast food restaurants would decrease, similar to the percentage of teenage smokers.

Many believe that the solution to childhood obesity is easy.  As discussed before, a poor diet and the lack of exercise are the cause of obesity, but there are many factors that create to the child having these problems, especially with the environment surrounding them.  The original methods of treating the children were to let the children deal with it themselves.  They would give the children an “exercise and eating regime” and expect them to follow it, losing the weight.  This proved to be ineffective to most because there was little support in place.  Many tried to come up with a pharmaceutical answer to obesity, but most of the pills created were dangerous and didn’t help the patient become healthy again.  In the 1960’s people created weight lose camps, also known as fat camps, to send children to in the summer.  These were set up by pediatricians and nutritionists who helped the children lose weight.  They would help the children eat a better diet and let them exercise through games and activities.  The children who attended these camps were usually ridiculed for their weight in usual school games, so being with other children like them helped raise their self-confidence.  These camps were successful often in helping children lose weight over the summer, but contained several downsides.  The first problem was the cost of the camps.  The first camps opening in “the late 1960s charged $830, which is about $5,370 in today’s dollars.  The average eight-week camp… today is… $8,000” (Dawes 168).  Most families cannot afford to pay this much to help their child lose weight.  The other downfall of weight loss camp is that it doesn’t help the child keep the weight off once they’ve lost it.  Once the child leaves the strict structure of the camp, they don’t have the ability to control themselves since it was all provided for them.  The old environmental factors come back, and so does the weight.  There is new research on methods that help the children not only lose the weight, but also keep it off.  The name of the treatment is called hunger training.  The method is just being tested now and is still in the experimental phase, but it helps the children lose the weight and also helps change their lifestyle at the same time.  There is a monitor to check the children’s blood glucose levels.  When the blood glucose levels fall under a certain point, the children will eat a meal.  They cannot eat between these points because the blood glucose shows when they are actually hungry, so this cuts out unnecessary eating.  Most of the participants that were tested for this lost weight.  The advantage of this method is that it helps the children gain awareness of eating when they aren’t hungry.  This gives them more control, helping them live a healthier lifestyle.

The best solution for childhood obesity is parental assistance.  Often obese children come from obese parents.  To help their children, they should also make their lifestyles healthier.  If parents eat unhealthy foods, the children are forced to eat it as well and will pick it up as a habit.  In the same way, if parents make a point to exercise, especially as a family activity, the children will pick it up as a habit and create a healthier lifestyle.  It is also important to monitor the amount of time children spend in front of a screen.  Not only does this time lead to inactivity, but the children will be prone to the persuasive advertisements in the media.  Parents must help their children live a healthy lifestyle or they could face further medical problems in the future.

Despite beliefs that a chubby child is a happy child, obesity hurts children physically and mentally.  Obese children are prone to numerous medical problems later in life, such as heart disease, as well as psychological problems.  A poor diet and minimal exercise causes obesity, but the factors that influence it are psychological and environmental.  In order to cure obesity, these factors must be addressed.  To do this, treatment plans must help the children change their lifestyle and parents need to help fix the environment around the child to help create a healthier life.  
