Childhood overweight has increased sharply in just two decades. Currently, more than 30% of children are overweight and 10% of them are obese. It is estimated that 80% of these children will still be obese tomorrow, making it one of the most alarming public health problems of the 21st century.
Lifestyle habits, the main cause of obesity
While it is true that around 30% of these cases may have a genetic component, the remaining 70% are due to poor lifestyle habits of sedentary lifestyles, abandonment of physical activity and ignorance of basic nutrition rules with an uncontrolled intake of products rich in refined products and saturated fats and the abuse of different types of sugars.
Agents involved in childhood obesity
Although the main problem with food today is that it is no longer prepared from natural ingredients, blaming the industry does not serve to excuse the other players in the food industry, which we could divide into three sectors: Family, School and Food Industry.
The family, the key to preventing childhood obesity
The preventive treatment of this situation begins in the breastfeeding period and breast milk is the best ally to reduce the risk of childhood obesity.
But what happens thereafter? How many meals are eaten correctly: at scheduled times, sitting around a table chewing and not gobbling, chatting about how the day went, with first and second courses cooked at home?
By resorting to microwaving convenience foods, an important part of the food industry mentioned above is adding zeros to its bottom line. It wouldn’t be entirely fair to always blame them for being too busy to cook.
How often on tedious summer afternoons, when they are still digesting their lunch, do children ask for a snack? What they are doing is demanding the parents’ attention. If instead of a cookie, you explain to them that what they have is not hunger, but boredom, what you are doing is educating them. By teaching them that frustration, dissatisfaction or boredom, which sometimes trigger serious problems, not only food problems, cannot be fought with food.
Children learn by imitating what they see. Mealtimes are also the time to share projects, experiences and joys: everything contributes to education.
School canteens and obesity
The school also has a very important role, since most children stay to eat in school canteens, and although nutritionists and dieticians have been collaborating in the menus lately, the food served in many cases is far from being organic and balanced, given the shortage of vegetables and the excess of carbohydrates and saturated fats. Pedagogically it is not adequate either: many children do not know how to peel fruit because they do not learn it either at home or at school, so apples, oranges, pears, etc. are doomed to disappear from our diet if they are not sold peeled. Mandarins, seedless, and bananas are the ones that save today’s children’s desserts as far as fruit is concerned.
Earlier I said that in today’s homes there is hardly any cooking, but in tomorrow’s homes there will be even less cooking. Since, leaving aside the Internet, nobody is in charge of teaching the adults of the future how to cook. It is curious that the gastronomic culture taught in some schools is reduced to baking cakes.
The food industry in obesity
As for the food industry, it is one of those responsible for our poor diet. It is only necessary to see in some labeling the quality of the ingredients they use. There is now a tendency to abuse the Light: before we used to eat little quantity of some things to avoid getting fat, while today we spend the day consuming products that are presented with “low calories”. Also certain “low cost” products that still present inferior qualities, enhance the accumulation of body fat.
Consequences of childhood obesity
The repercussions of overweight and obesity on the psychological development and social adaptation of the child are extremely important. Overweight children do not fit the beauty standards of our society, so it is not surprising that they feel inferiority and have a poor self-image. They are children and adolescents who find it difficult to make friends and the discrimination to which they are subjected triggers in them antisocial attitudes. They become isolated, depressed and enter a spiral that induces them to continue eating to satisfy their low self-esteem.
Another consequence of obesity is a type of disease that until now was considered exclusive to adults, such as hypercholesterolemia or type 2 diabetes, vascular diseases or hypertension.
Treatment of childhood obesity
In this situation, the aim is not to put the child on a diet so that he/she loses the excess weight and the rest of the family continues with the bad eating habits, but to change the mentality, establishing a lifestyle for everyone that will last into adulthood.
This is where the pediatrician and the pediatric endocrinologist intervene, who will review the aforementioned aspects and together with adequate family communication will contribute to prevent and treat obesity.