A society must be judged by how it treats its most vulnerable members: its children. It seems that America is falling shamefully short.
We know that to succeed, children need stable homes, quality health care, ample nutritious food, good schools, safe neighborhoods, and access to resources and opportunities that enable them to reach their potential. For too many of our children, especially children of color, these basic building blocks are out of reach.
And yet, in the wealthiest nation on Earth, the proportion of federal dollars invested in children has fallen to its lowest level in a decade. The shameful state of your child’s health is not an inevitability — it is a choice. We do not lack the resources to make sure every child has a chance to succeed. We just choose to invest them elsewhere.
The United States is experiencing an epidemic of obesity. Two thirds of American adults are either overweight or obese — and this epidemic also affects children. Today, one third of all children ages 2 – 19 are overweight or obese. Most of these children will become diabetic.
Many researchers feel the generation of children born in 2000 will likely live shorter life spans than their parents. The economic productivity of this generation will probably be less than that of their parents as well. If they will be less productive, how will they support themselves?
It is important to remember that children learn most of their health habits at home. As a parent, you must lead by example and teach your child the importance of good nutrition, physical activity, and emotional health.
There is a link between diets high in “ultra-processed” foods and health problems. Ultra-processed foods have ingredients common in industrial food manufacturing, such as hydrogenated oils, high-fructose corn syrup, flavoring agents, and emulsifiers. Many processed foods are just chemicals formulated to taste like food, and they may even taste better than what you could make at home. They are often cheaper and more convenient than making a meal from whole foods. But they are generally high in calories, salt, sugar, and fat. The high carbohydrate load, along with artificial ingredients, causes an inflammatory reaction in the body that can lead to obesity and begin the cascade of increasing metabolic illnesses.
Five Life-Changing Steps You Can Take to Help Your Overweight Child
1. Replace sugary juices and soft drinks with pure water.
Children can easily cut down on the amount of sugar they eat by eliminating soda and juice and by drinking only water. This step alone can have a dramatic effect on your child’s weight and health, since every soft drink or sugar-sweetened beverage consumed increases the risk of obesity by a whopping 60%.
2. Encourage your children to eat healthy, nutritious foods, with a focus on fresh whole foods, preferably organic whenever possible.
Remember that any meal or snack high in carbohydrates or sugars generates a rapid rise in your child’s blood glucose level. To adjust for this rise, the pancreas secretes insulin into the bloodstream, which lowers your child’s glucose (sugar) level. Insulin is essentially a storage hormone, used to store the excess calories from carbohydrates in the form of fat.
Insulin, stimulated by the excess carbohydrates in overabundant consumption of grains, starches, and sweets, is responsible for your overweight child’s bulging tummy and fat rolls. Even worse, high insulin levels suppress two other important hormones — glucagon and growth hormones; the first is responsible for burning fat and sugar, the second for promoting muscle development. So insulin from excess carbohydrates promotes fat and then wards off your body’s ability to lose that fat.
3. Decrease or eliminate TV time and remove the TV from your child’s bedroom.
TV and prolonged video use are often destructive influences on children. Not only do they encourage inactivity, but they also expose children to commercials promoting worthless foods. Some parents have implemented a rule that allows the child one minute of video (TV or game) time for every minute of exercise.
4. Increase exercise.
Exercise is extremely important for all children. Your overweight or obese child needs at least 30 minutes of exercise a day, and major studies have shown that 60 minutes a day is best.
Any activity that gets your child up and away from the television set, video game, or computer is a good idea. Start out with a daily walk with your child, and then gradually increase the intensity to include activities such as jogging, hiking, and biking.
5. Help your child address emotional eating.
Emotions play a major role in childhood obesity, and weight loss efforts often are sabotaged by emotional eating. Your child may also have a hard time giving up junk food snacks. Offer vegetable snacks or whole fruit slices instead of ready-made packaged foods.
Ultimately, teaching your child the importance of healthy foods and exercise is the key to maintaining health. With that in mind, here are more tips to foster a healthy view of food and self-esteem in your child.
- Lead by example and seek to maintain optimal body weight for yourself and your spouse.
- Refrain from making jokes about your child’s weight, even if no harm is intended.
- Explain the health risks of being overweight to your child, but avoid comparing your overweight child to other children, including thinner siblings.
- Cook healthy meals for your family, and let your child be involved in making dinner, but avoid making your child eat different food than the rest of the family eats.
- Encourage your children to make healthy food choices, and praise them when they do; do not put your child down about weight or eating habits.
- Instead of using food as a reward or punishment, have healthy snacks available at all times, and explain to your child the benefits he will get from eating these fresh, whole foods.
Creating health is actually quite simple when you get right down to it. It is a matter of returning to the basics of whole, fresh, organically-grown foods packed with all the nutrients your body needs. Team that with exercise and proper sleep, and you have the recipe for growing an optimally healthy child.
Although choosing real food over processed foods may be simple, it is not necessarily economical. Herein lies a huge problem with our food “system.” Large influential corporations decide what is produced, packaged, and promoted; they care only about the bottom line without any concern for the health effects that may result from their decisions. For example, nutritionists have provided the government with scientific data showing that milk is not necessary for children. Yet the dairy industry is a powerful lobby, and it has been successful at keeping the milk and dairy requirements included in the government’s suggested food plan.
When a beautiful salad loaded with fresh vegetables is more expensive than a hamburger and french fries, people tend to choose the cheaper option, not realizing that it is going to cost them their health later. There are no easy solutions to this obesity epidemic, but we, as a community, need to begin to address it. Our children deserve it.
After completing Nursing school in Boston and working in the Air Force and critical care arena, Rota decided to focus on disease prevention. She has studied environmental, integrative and functional medicine in order to help people learn to better understand their own role in health care.
