What Can Be Done To Change The Growing Trend Towards Obesity In Society, Especially Among School And College Students?

“If health is lost, something is lost” – this saying aptly describes the relevance of health in our lives. On the fast development of science and technology human beings especially the younger generations have resorted to games on the computer, programmes on the TV screen at leisure. The time spent outdoors and the physical activity has come to a bare minimum which raises an alarm of health issues. Earlier obesity was seen as a problem of adults, now it is increasingly becoming common in children. In order to stay fit one has to have the right amount of food of the right kind at the right time. 

According to the data from the 1988-2010 National Health and Nutrition Survey of Children’s Health, researchers suggest that class-specific trends in obesity began to appear during the 2003-2004 time period. Food intake and physical activity levels are the major contributors to obesity, and researchers attribute the growing disparity in obesity between socio-economic classes to just that. Parents have a crucial role to play in safeguarding their young children’s health especially when the children are minors, that is, before the children are able to decide for themselves.

A person is considered really fat if his or her Body Mass Index (BMI) is greater than or equal to 40, which is approximately the equal of being 100 pounds or more over ideal body weight. A healthy person should have his or her BMI between 18 and 25. The higher the BMI the riskier life is for such persons. It is always better to prevent obesity rather than trying to reduce one’s BMI when it is too high. A combination of certain factors would ably work out in preventing obesity in the younger generation, especially school and college students. Some of those factors are access to healthier food items within neighborhoods, access to community parks, recreation centers and infrastructure with walking area etc. Apart from the major causes like the dietary habits, exercise, sleep patterns; there could be genetic contribution and socio-economic class also which add to the risk factor of obesity. 

Obesity has to be checked in the initial stage. The achievement of a target weight is not the end of the process. Obesity is a chronic disease which needs to be managed throughout a person's life, as its relapse is common. 'Yo-yo dieting' with weight going up and down is undesirable and unhealthy.  Healthy food with less calories and rich dietary fibres has to be taken along with regular physical exercise for a minimum of 30 minutes everyday in order to maintain a healthy body weight. Obesity can be better termed a lifestyle disease because it has to mainly do with the lifestyle one adopts. The healthier the lifestyles, the healthier the lives are. Let us pledge to keep an eye on the calories we take and also let us burn more calories and then we are sure to lead a normal healthy life.

Author Bio:

I am Awilda Harrison, living along with my family at Manhattan, NY. I am holding a Master degree in Linguistics. To tell about my career, I'm a professional writer working for most of the online professional resume writing service. I love to spare my free times along with my kids, trying out new recipes and browsing sites to gain more knowledge, apart from writing.