All across the western world more and more young boys and girls in their teens and younger are becoming obese which can lead to a whole host of serious health complications in their adult life.
Being overweight in childhood and adolescence is causing severe physical and psychological problems in childhood and increased risk of disease and premature death. Therefore, prevention and treatment of childhood obesity is a priority in public health.
In theory, prevention and treatment of any excess weight is easy. If energy intake is less than your energy output, you lose weight. It seems simple, but in practice, it is difficult to lose weight, and this is largely a result of thousands of year’s human genetics, which has led us to store fat in times of abundance to survive in times of food shortages.
In developed countries there is an overabundance of attractive and high-energy food (i.e. eating habits have changed) and now the energy is not strictly necessary, nor is it encouraged and our preference is for sedentary leisure activities, this is why boys are now often found in their bedrooms playing computer games rather than outside kicking a ball around.
Although the prevention of childhood obesity is a priority in public health, we do not really know what the most appropriate way to accomplish this task. Recently, researchers have analyzed the prevention and treatment strategies available today. Most programs use approaches that focus on school or family.
The school-centered programs have been geared towards prevention, targeting all students in selected classes to avoid stigmatizing children that are obese. These programs not only include initiatives to promote health on the one hand, and physical activity, on the other, but also multifaceted interventions.
These initiatives included programs focused on the classroom to promote healthy eating and increased physical activity fun; the practical demonstration of the principles taught by altering the composition of school meals to make them healthier, with less fat and more fruits and vegetables.
Clearly, the success of these initiatives focused on school requires the enthusiasm of teachers and trained in the principles and practices of a healthy lifestyle.
Programs focused on the family, as its name suggests, focus on the family unit because it is assumed that, unless encourage the entire family to adopt a healthier lifestyle, and then it is not likely that children will maintain positive habits learned at school.
Most of these studies had directly or indirectly with medical personnel or social workers to provide encouragement and knowledge. The goal was to change the behavior of the whole family to ensure the long-term maintenance of a healthy lifestyle after the program.
To date and as a general rule intervention programs that focus in schools have not succeeded in reducing the prevalence of obesity. Some studies of family therapy, found favorable changes were observed in weight loss long term, but only in highly motivated people.
One possible explanation for the modest results may reside in the fact that the recommendations relating to both dietary and physical activity prescribed in approaches that focus on family and school, are not particularly effective.
Another possibility is that environmental factors (eg, increase in sedentary activities like television, video games and computers, lack of urban and suburban areas to encourage take an active lifestyle, including adequate sidewalks and lanes bicycles, the greater tendency to eat away from home, and the fact that rations are more abundant) to tilt the balance significantly towards weight gain.
No related posts.