Public Schools And Childhood Obesity
27 Mar 2009Many parents struggle to get their children to lose weight, often resorting to forcing diets and exercise on their children who want nothing to do with the different food and additional exercise. Educating children about the problems associated with obesity also appears to not work well as children continue to be less active. A summer weight loss camp for kids is successful because it removes children from their normal environment. However, attempting to make drastic changes at home is often much more difficult because of factors that most parents fail to consider.
Many factors are influencing the trend of children becoming overweight in the US. One factor parents should definitely consider is how the social environment can be a negative or positive place of reinforcing healthy eating habits and being fit. For example, one might look at the fact that many public schools are poorly funded and receive offers from vending machine companies to get thousands of dollars in exchange for placing their machines in the schools.
Consider the kinds of food typically sold in a vending machine – they aren’t very healthy. Most are high in calories, contain few nutrients, and have a lot of fats and sugars. In other words, junk food. Now think about the number of kids that eat these foods on a daily basis because they are so readily available at schools and the growing trend of obese children should come as little surprise.
Also think about the amount of time that children have to eat lunch at school. Most schools have a lunch period that is somewhere between 15 and 40 minutes long, including time to get to and from class, go to the bathroom, go to a locker, wait in line for food, and so on. This translates to very few children actually having enough time to eat a healthy lunch. Instead, many kids opt to eat foods that are easy to eat and quick – which generally are high calorie foods, sodas, and so on.
The bottom line is that factors beyond parents’ control can be extremely detrimental to weight loss efforts. Therefore, they must take the extra steps to ensure their child does not fall in to the trap of relying on vending machines and unhealthy foods for their lunch five days a week. One of the main reasons that weight loss camps are so successful is because they effectively remove kids from these external factors, allowing them to build a solid framework to take home and build on. If you are a parent that feels like you are at the end of your rope in regards to helping your child, you may want to look in to a weight loss camp for teens to jump start the program.
