Rise of The Teletubbys
By Mark on Sep 24, 2008 in Featured
We have a generation of up and coming obese children these days, and this is probably mainly due to 
the fact that they don’t exercise like they should do, unlike they did in years gone by. It has been recently reported that the amount of time that modern-day children spend actually doing exercise is at it’s lowest levels in a long time.
A lot of parents these days grossly under estimate how much exercise their children are actually doing, which is putting their children on a obesity timebomb, which is ticking away without even them realising it.The study which was done from corresponding universities Glasgow and Newcastle proved that many six and seven-year-olds are dangerously under active, what they managed to evaluate from the study was that by the year 2010.
A lot of children will be overweight unless they actually start to do some physical activity, children are supposedly supposed to do one hour’s exercise either running around or playing with their friends, or whatever it is they like to do.
Government figures have shown that six to seven-year-olds tend to be active for 146 minutes each day. But this research that has come to light has said that girls have roughly 22 minutes and boys only 26 minutes exercise per day. The researchers used a device which is called a accelerometer which measured their overall activity throughout the day.
Children are being advised to take lesser car journeys and parents please take note here, how many of you take your children to school in a car when they could be walking or going on their bike instead. It has become apparent that the child obesity problem has been overlooked very much so by the government. It would seem times are changing very much so compared to how they were when I was younger.
There didn’t seem to be many days go by where I wasn’t on my pushbike, playing football, playing cricket, or just generally running around playing games. I can quite honestly say I used to be all over the place, I don’t think children these days play games like I used to when I was younger.
Which involved moving around a lot, it does make me wonder if they actually had to do a cross-country run, like we used to have to do I dare say most of them. Wouldn’t even get past the first part of it let alone complete it. I sometimes wonder if it’s not being cool being a person who looks after your health. Or are you somebody that might be called a sissy if you are doing regular exercise.
Or is it merely just a sign of the times that our children are growing to grow up, as obese adults and contract diseases such as type two diabetes, heart problems and all the other things which are associated with being overweight.
I suppose when you have the choice between sitting down and playing a computer game for hours and hours, or playing a Xbox game with your friends online. Then getting some exercise outside probably does seem quite boring compared to doing that.
The problem is we really do need to educate our children to what will happen to them if they don’t start to move around a lot more than they are now. Here are some other things I used to do when I was younger I wonder if the children of today even attempt half of these.
Cycling where ever I went long and short distances
Swimming
Playing football
Judo
Walking to the swimming baths
Cross-country runs
Physical education twice a week at school
Rugby
Cricket
Doing errands for my parents
Delivering newspapers in all weathers I might add
Scout camping
Sponsored walks
Thinking about it now I never even realised how much I used to do compared to what I do now. Perhaps as people overtime we tend to think that we can get away with doing very little activity when in fact nothing is further from the truth
So it’s time to take action now rather than later
Source the current bun sorry Sun newspaper
Tags: Exercise
