Childhood Obesity

Past the accelerated activity of the 20th century comes the new millennium bringing the modernized world to a throne of leisure and lethargy. Consequently sabotaging the health of our children and our future as a nation, obesity once thought only to be common to the fully grown adult, has now plunged its way belly first into America's freshest gene pool. The epidemic of obesity among children has its roots in consumer culture and in contemporary American society all a part of the environment that accommodates the modern-day American family. Diet pills, surgery, and a whole array of temporary solutions have been offered to fight problem but the real causes and solutions go much deeper into the political, social and economic structures of our society that weigh in with social ignorance of our times. But before we can label a particular faucet of American life for proper cause and solution there would have to be a stress on individual responsibility and a strengthening of community ties and values. What would be my authority on this problem if I did not take care of the one body I do have direct influence over?

A problem of such boundary and magnitude could not possibly be resolved with a simple reductive weight-loss mindset. For in order to make permanent cuts on the waist lines of the young the solution would have to be brought about with true beneficial flavor; in other words a real lesson would have to be learned. But before generations of the future can attempt to rise to such lesson it would have to be versed among the living leaders, teachers and parents of our time. The problem is so stepped within society at large that the only way to bring about infective change would be to go to the source; the self. The media, educational facilities, community and family are all part of the denominator but to avoid laying the blame on just one of these factors of American life and turning our attention away from the others we would have to start from the inside out.

In response to the headlining epidemic a very profitable industry has emerged for weight loss products and weight removal techniques. Pills, diet plans, and surgery have all been seen as the solution and quickest way to health recovery but however effective these methods may be they offer only temporary solution. Surgery and weight loss mechanisms are only slight recovery methods that do not to prevent or address the problem at its core. A prevalence of these methods could only lead us into a cycle of wayward health care and would only cause adverse side effects if used on children. For the same reasons these methods would not work in Belgium, these quick fix solutions only fuel a system that allows for the

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