Research+Paper

[|Senior sem - paper - Final_draft[1.docx]] __Research Paper:__ Childhood Obesity: And the Lack of Importance on Physical Activity in America Final Paper due March 29, 2010.

This is the format I am supposed to complete for my completion dates:

A minimum of 2 total pages due: day of week, Friday March 11, 2010

At least 2 additional pages (minimum of 4 pages total) due: day of week, Monday March 14, 2010

At least 2 additional pages (minimum of 6 pages total) due: day of week, Wednesday March 16, 2010

At least 2 additional pages (minimum of 8 pages total) due:[|senior sem paper.docx] day of week, Thursday March 18, 2010

[|Peer review for me 1- senior sem.doc] Zach C --> Brad S 1. Italicize my thesis 2. Fix my few gramatical errors 3. 4.

[|peer review for me 2 - senior sme.docx]

Paper

__Childhood Obesity: __ __And the Lack of Importance on Physical Activity in America __ __Friday March 11, 2010__ America is in the midst of many changes and many issues. An economical recession, threats of terror, the global warming controversy and America’s role in it. We have many issues facing our government and our people, but one issues that is very important, but is pushed on the back burners is America’s weight problem. We are the heaviest country in the world, and with each day we continue to increase that. Obesity has come on fast and strong in recent decades and threatens the health of many Americans, especially our youth. Obesity in children has increased dramatically in the past thirty years. We have come to value the take out dinner and fast food restaurants more than we ever have in the past. Children today are being exposed to more advertising and commercials through the advanced media we have all over the world. These big media companies target channels and shows that children are more likely to watch and place products on commercials that appeal to the youth. It’s not all about food though. The big screen televisions that we watch those commercials and ads on are another part of the problem. Not that people can’t have nice quality televisions to enjoy in their home, but we as a nation have put such and importance on quality of television and enjoyment of movies and TV shows. We spend way too much time watching TV, again, especially the youth of America. Many kids age 6 to 12 come home after school with the choice of homework, or TV. The choice is usually one sided unless the child is ambitious and wants to do their work. Kids age 13 to 18 have the option of sports, which gives them a physically activity to do and helps them organize their schedule between school and sports. They don’t have the leisure time to be able to watch television, or take time to just sit around. The television argument is one for the home. It is the responsibility of the parents to control what their children are watching, and how much of it their watching. Parental involvement is another leading factor in the case of child obesity. There are many reason and causes for this disease, and due to new technological advances and a lack of importance on physical fitness for children, childhood obesity is becoming one of America's biggest problems. The first and foremost reason that causes Childhood Obesity, a child’s eating habits. What they eat? How much they eat? Where they’re eating? Are all good questions to start with when understanding how this problem has enlarged. Children ages 13 and under have a strong tendency to have a sweet tooth for candy and sugar. We remember the days of our youth. Always wanting to buy a candy bar while waiting in line at the grocery store, but your parents wouldn’t let you. We didn’t know why then, but now we know it was because a sugar rush would have us bouncing off the walls one minute, and crashing hard the next. Candies and chocolates aren’t very nutritious, but where some of the most damage is done when it comes to obesity in children and adults, is at fast food restaurants. The five most popular and most eaten at fast food joints are 1. Wendy’s 2. Taco Bell 3. McDonalds 4. Burger King and number 5. KFC. To start at the top of the list, Wendy’s Quarter-Pounder single, without cheese, has a total of 430 calories. That’s a whole lot of calories for just one single burger patty. A McDonalds Quarter-Pounder single with cheese is around 530 calories. Approximately 250 of those calories are from pure fat (Organic Healthy Eating). These are just the top two most popular places, not the two unhealthiest, though they are both near the top of that list too. Imagine what KFC and their fried chicken must have inside all of that greasy goodness. In KFC’s Original Recipe Chicken Drumstick there are 140 calories and 9 grams of fat. That’s just a tiny little drumstick. In a Thigh, there are 250 calories and 18 grams of fat, and in a Breast, there are 400 calories and24 grams of fat (Organic Healthy Eating). They’re just a few statistics that help prove that Fast Food is entirely unhealthy when eating on daily or even a weekly basis. All of the fat that people ingest into their bodies will come full circle to haunt them with health conditions like heart disease, digestive issues, and even colon cancer. The thing is that the majority of the time, most major fast food corporations don’t care at all about what your children are eating, as long as they have costumers and they’re making money. In the past decade, most all major fast food restaurants have begun to add more healthy meals and less fat due to increasing protest about the quality of their food (Diet Facts.com). Though there is truth to that, the food you buy at these places is still not healthy enough to eat more than once a week or even once every two weeks. And with the high demand of making their food more healthy, it has given the businesses of this industry more opportunity to advertise with a fresh campaign of healthy foods at a low price and no wait. Campaigning is one of the things that this industry does best, especially when targeting children. “Happy Meals, Kids Meals,” advertisements is how many fast food joints rake in their dough. They purposely target television shows and channels that have high ratings for kids ages 3 to 15, and place their commercials on that channel (ABC-CLIO Issues). Why those ages? Because kids at the young ages of 3 to 12 love simple foods like what McDonalds, Wendy’s, and Burger King offer. Chicken nuggets, fries, burgers, and sodas, are the four main items sold off the menu in each of those three restaurants. Children love watching TV because it is a world of wonderful entertainment for them when they have nothing to do. Which is why it is smart for a business to target them to through TV ads to make money. Most Children age 13 to 15 begin to acquire taste for a more variety of foods that range outside of a fast food restaurant. But, kids at those ages also can’t wait to drive, and one of the best things to do when you first get your license, is to go through Drive-In fast food places. The fast food industry is a 100 billion dollar a year industry, and because we love the idea of a “quick fix,” fast food joints will be around for a very long time. __Monday March 14, 2010__ Fast Food restaurants would be too easy to label as the only cause, and it would be unfair. Eating fatty foods is not the only reason why children in America today are more overweight than ever. Television, video games, and computers have all contributed to laziness or to the lack of energy put forth into a sport or physical activity. Children love television. It is a way for them to be entertained without doing a thing but pointing the remote at the TV, and changing the channel when a show goes to a commercial. The children in our nation spend most of their time on their computers, video games, iPods, and in front of their TV. Video games are also an emerging activity for children to do, but it doesn’t improve their physical health whatsoever. Kids, mainly boys, now days will sit hours upon hours in their rooms playing video games with their headsets on and talking to their friends as they try to kill each other in the newest //Call of Duty// game. The average male teenager spends 2 to 3 hours a day playing video games when he gets home from school or work (NCFR). That 2 to 3 hours of wasting away in a room doing nothing but sitting and moving your thumbs. Video games are a nice way to have fun and be entertained once and a while, but kids in their middle teen years sometimes get addicted to a fantasy world in which they love, feel a part of, and feel accepted in. Facebook and Myspace have revolutionized internet communication and networking. Hours are spent on these sites talking, posting, and viewing all of the people and applications on these sites. About 65% of kids 10 to 20 have at least a Myspace or Facebook page (University of Michigan Health). As nice as it is to easily communicate with friends, these sites are dangerous, not only do kids spend way too much time on these websites, but their information is posted on the World Wide Web for any and all to see. Kids age 2 to 5 will watch on average, approximately 32 hours of television a week. (University of Michigan Health) Children ages 6 to 11 watch around 28 hours a week. Most kids that are older even have a television in their rooms, and many studies have shown that kids with a TV in their room watch an hour and a half more than kids who don’t have one in their room. 68% of kids 8 to 18 do, and about half of them have a DVD or VCR player, and a third of kids between those ages in America have cable or satellite with premium channels (NCFR). We don’t just watch TV by ourselves after school or on the weekends, we watch it during meals too. During meals like dinner, breakfast, or lunch, 63% of households with children in America have the TV on while they eat (NCFR). TV is a problem, but shows and movies are not bad in themselves, they’re just entertainment. We need to have control of the hours and shows our kids watch. In 53% of American homes with kids, one or more televisions is on “most” of the time (University of Michigan Health). A hundred years ago people didn’t have these problems. Children weren’t overweight; we didn’t eat fat foods or sit on our butts and watch television while we stuffed our face with snacks and flip through channels instead of doing something productive with our time. Parents do not have a big enough say when it comes to limitations on TV watching or time limits on other electronic devices. Some parents don’t even care. They come and turn on the television sets themselves when they come home. As kids, we learn from our parents. They are the main source of our understanding of the world and we model ourselves after them. If we see laziness, we imitate laziness most of the time. A child, especially a young child, is like a sponge soaking everything up for their first couple of years until they begin to make their own goals and judgments on things. But during the beginning kids don’t make decisions for themselves, their parents do. Their parents are in full control until the child starts to become more aware of life and his or her surroundings and starts to mature as they enter into their early teen years (NFCR). Therefore, most of what their life is like and what they see is what they come to expect as they mature. __Wedn__ __esday March 16, 2010__ It is a parent’s duty to protect, raise, and keep their child healthy. This means eating right and keeping their kids active in extracurricular events such as sports, music, or part-time jobs. All of which hold valuable life lessons for the child to learn as they mature towards adult-hood. A job won’t come until their teen years, but sports is one of the best ways to have your child stay active, and use all of the energy they build up during the day. Parents can’t force their child to play sports, but they can at least introduce athletics to the child at an early age, and then as a few years pass the child can determine if they want to continue. The child may decide they do not want to do it after just a few games, but parents must try to instill the importance of physical activity and taking care of your body because it is the only one you get. Parents don’t need to enroll their child in a sport to do that. They just need to spend time with their child doing something more than watching TV. Playing with them outside, taking a bike ride, going fishing, taking a family vacation, or even just enjoying a walk around the block are all good ways to show the importance of family bonding and an activity outside of the use of electronic devices. Technology is great, and it has made our lives much easier. But we sometimes forget that there is more to life than just sitting around and playing video games and using the computer all day. Physical fitness and activities at home are even more important than ever. Schools are starting to drop gym classes and sports team around the country at schools where funding is being cut on physical fitness (ABC-CLIO Issues). Most schools are doing okay and are implementing more healthy eating styles in the school’s cafeterias, but this is mainly schools in prominent and well doing communities and townships (Facts On File). The government is starting programs to help take the junk food snacks that kids love, and are replacing them with healthier drinks and vending machine snacks. The Obama administration has taken a head on approach and is trying to make this happen in all school. Mrs. Obama is also a leading advocate for childhood obesity and how we need to help stop it and create a healthier lifestyle for our youth (CNNNews). President Obama has done some work with another organization that is geared towards keeping gym in schools and setting up health classes where kids can learn about nutrition, the human body, drugs and alcohol, and how everything you do affects your body. The organization is called Play 60 and is composed of star NFL players including superbowl winning quarterback and safety Drew Brees and Troy Polamalu. And along with Obama and his United We Serve, Brees, Polamalu and Play 60 shot a commercial emphasizing the need to not only to be active, but to have knowledge of our bodies and our health to correct our weight problem (CNNNews). __Thursday March 18, 2010__ Childhood obesity is a bigger problem than most people realize. They know we as a whole are the heaviest country, but they don’t understand that we will continue to get heavier and heavier with our overweight children growing up and becoming overweight adults. Yes, the majority of our youth in America is in good health. Only about 15% are overweight. But the problem is that forty years ago, that same number was at 4%. It has almost quadrupled in 4 decades and it will continue to rise. Three out of every four overweight children and teens in America are projected to become overweight adults, thus for increasing our number of obese adults. That is an astounding number of people. Understanding obesity, and even being overweight is a hard task, and taking on the problem of obesity in America may be tougher than taking on the economic problems and the high gas prices at the same time. That’s why I have written this paper to hopefully inspire and educate in hopes that if everyone pitches in to do their part in helping others realize the severity of this problem, we may one day be able to gradually decrease the number to where it is an issue that does not threaten so many lives of adults, and children. Everyone from schools, fast food restaurants, the government, special organizations, parents, and even you can help solve our big problem that is Childhood obesity. If we kill obesity at the source of early childhood, we have a good chance.