Childhood Obesity: Scary and Sad

Scary:
ONE THIRD of all children and adolescents are overweight or obese and this percentage is growing rapidly. (US statistics 2010)

SAD:
Obesity in children has profound negative effects on their physical and psychological health.

Even More Scary:

When you consider that these overweight children and adolescents will continue to gain weight in their lives it is frightening to think of our adult population in the future.

The Future is Already Here:

Almost 70 percent of Mexicans are now overweight and almost one-third are obese. Although Mexico is the fattest country now, we could soon see a world where MANY countries reach this level and even go beyond it!

Facts and Figures

The percentage of children aged 6–11 years in the United States who were obese increased from 7% in 1980 to nearly 18% in 2010.
Childhood obesity has more than doubled in children and tripled in adolescents in the past 30 years
The percentage of children aged 6–11 years in the United States who were obese increased from 7% in 1980 to nearly 18% in 2010
Similarly, the percentage of adolescents aged 12–19 years who were obese increased from 5% to 18% over the same period

Note these are statistics from United States but many other countries mirror these.

Definition:

Mildly obese- a person’s weight is 20% to 40% over ideal weight.
Moderately obese- 40 to 100% over ideal weight.
Morbidly obese – 100% over ideal weight.
Overweight – 10 to 20% over ideal weight.

These exact measures of obesity are typically for adults – read IS Obesity A Disease? – but for children obesity it is sometime just defined as a child having enough excess weight and fat to negatively affect their health.

This underlines just how destructive this can be.

My Own Response to This Scary Trend for Children

Being obese or overweight is a symptom of poor health. Let us help our children become healthier. When they become healthier, weight drops off. What needs to happen is for people to get healthy to lose weight, not lose weight to get healthy.

This is why I constantly write about things like Acid/Alkaline Balance, Sugar Cravings, Smart Carbs, Food Combining and Powerfoods. I want to help people become healthy and then it naturally follows that they achieve their optimum weight.

Recently I started teaching my own healthy version of the trendy 2 – 5 Diet. In that course I emphasize getting healthy even though it has a focus on losing weight.

As a parent you can take the above courses and feed your children healthy meals so they get healthy and be at their correct weight and can run around like children. And guess what you will feel better too!

Check out all these healthy desserts to help move forward: Sugar Free Desserts

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