Fat Reports for Children are Introduced
By Mark on Jul 28, 2008 in Recently Featured
We are all aware of how obesity has become accelerated over the years due to the
fact that most of us now have sedentary lifestyles, that tend to revolve around less physical activity overheating, which can be attributed to things like Playstation’s computers, watching too much television, and using any other gadget that encourages a lack of physical activity in our society these days.
About a year ago as far as time is concerned Jamie Oliver well known celebrity UK chef, embarked on a campaign to have the school meals changed because he could see the way things were going as regards to our ever growing, younger generation.
Who has started to become fatter by the minute, when I think back to when I was younger. There wasn’t so much technology around as there is these days fast-food outlets were in their infancy, there was no McDonald’s, chip were about the thing that most of us ate as regards take-away food, even though I can remember some places did sell kebabs and Kentucky fried chicken was around at the time.
But mostly the thing that has changed over the years is people seem to do less what I would call social exercise activities, I very rarely see children these days by what we used to call “dob” “and dobby ball” in its simplest form this game was a game of tag where you touched the person and they were on the same thing applied with a ball.
When I think about the amount of physical activity that I used to get when I was younger, I don’t think it compares to the amount that our younger generation tends to get these days.
I was always doing something physical whether it be riding a bike, swimming, playing football, cricket, and just moving about generally an awful lot more.
But eating habits are different these days compared to when I was younger and I have mentioned this numerous times in the past, but eating things like pizza’s for your lunch or tea was quite unheard-of in days gone by, about the nearest thing we had to a PlayStation was, what I call a pong, where you had screen with two sides a goal and a bat.
And that was it due to the simplicity of this game it was quite easy to get very bored after a while because there were no levels etc, and not much interactivity and no music etc to make it more real and exciting unlike the video games that we have today.
Which tend to have numerous levels special effects music etc and you can spend hours and hours playing them.
Which when you put that at the side of doing some kind of physical activity that probably seems in comparison quite boring, so it’s no wonder that children choose the easier path of playing the game. Rather than doing some kind of physical activity that would be far more beneficial to themselves in the long-term.
What we have to clearly remember here is that the habits that you ingrain within yourself between the ages of 12 and 20 say are the ones that tend to stay with you all your life.
This is why it is important to catch these habits at an early age and replace unhealthy eating habits with good ones instead.
The reports are to be introduced in September and and will show the weight of the child at ages 4-5 and 10-11 years of age, official figures that have been released now show that one in 10 children between the ages of four and five are now obese and 13 percent are considered overweight as well.
In the 10 to 11-year-old bracket 17 1/2 percent are obese and a further 14.2 percent were known to be overweight.
The British Medical Association said that it now predicts that a quarter of our children’s population will become obese by the year 2020, and they will have a shorter life expectancy than their parents would have, are we getting to the stage now where the parents are going to be living longer than our children.
Thinking back to when I was younger I can remember there being one of two fat children in our particular schools that I went to, but I think these days it’s probably even more common than it used to be, if we parents that we really do have to do take any interest in what our children are eating and encourage them to get into better eating habits earlier in their lives.
Otherwise they will just become another obesity statistic originally being overweight was something that was generally related to being older but now it seems things are changing.
Is it because also due to the fact that we as people are passing our own habits onto our own children and not even realising it somewhere the blame has to lie with somebody.
After all we are the only people whom decide what we eat and what physical activity we do or don’t do.
References: The Independent Children To Get Fat Reports
