NursingLife.net – Health Care Advices

In developed societies childhood obesity is becoming a health problem increasingly common. To fight it requires a joint effort of parents, school boards, food chains, and generally throughout society.

1. What is obesity?
Obesity may be defined as the result of neglect combined with one of the main features of contemporary society: society of abundance or fullness, and also naturally a large dose of ignorance, which makes us wonder why we have come to this situation.

And is that obesity will become, as the WHO says in the “epidemic of the century”, with serious consequences for health, social and economic.

2. Changing habits
After the Second World War, went through times of scarcity and struggle for survival. The few foods that were within our reach were natural and the effort required not only the cultivation of potatoes, legumes, vegetables or cereals almost always integers (whole grain), but to put bread on the table, had to be kneading.

Then there was obese, ate more rich and looked good, nothing to do with the appearance of the poor than just food available, just the opposite of what is happening in the developed world: the most disadvantaged are the have the highest overweight. He eats a lot and evil in general, the foods we eat are high in calories, but very poor in terms of nutritional value. It is essential that the body meets your nutritional needs.

3. Why fatter?
The man comes equipped from birth with genes and hormones that regulate energy balance equation: on the one hand there are the calories we consume and the other are the calories we burn when we perform any type of physical activity. If we take more calories than you spend, this difference becomes body fat. And this is why overweight and the adverse consequences of obesity that now leads to a growing public health crisis of global reach.

So much so that WHO has adopted a formal estrategiaglobal Diet, Physical Activity and Health, which recommends limited consumption of fat, salt and sugars. The obesity problem demands serious action from governments because it is causing huge costs to health systems.

In today’s society, we buy in supermarkets. The name can not be more illustrative: the shelves are packed with all kinds of food, very appealing to the eye, and delicious to the palate, because they carry too much sugar, salt and high in fat. Tenders accentuates the quantity “Take two for the same price.” Saying that does not require a strong will and moderation, something wrong with our society today, where the excess premium.

According to public health experts, 18% of European children are overweight or obese. He said that children of today will be the first generation in history whose life expectancy will be below those of their parents. This should make a big concern for us, because somehow we are responsible for what our children are taken to the mouth, but an epidemic of this nature should also require the attention of governments.

4. How to fight childhood obesity
It is not an aesthetic problem but the risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, hypercholesterolemia, hypertension, or thrombosis, to name a few. It is a matter of education. The European Association for the Study of Obesity shows that 8% of the cost of healthcare in Europe is aimed at treating obesity and related diseases with the disorder.

Being such a large number should be looking at how to combat it responsibly. School boards are required to strengthen hygiene and dietary habits of students, ie, placing the physical care and diet at the same level of consideration that we have with other academic subjects.

Menus avoiding junk foods and soft drinks that children freely in many cases removed from vending machines. Teaching them to eat better, stay active and watch less television. Parents also should take into account all these observations, they are the first educators of their children.

Food chains, similarly, should direct their production to more nutritious products, taking into account that are beneficial to health, above all other considerations.

Should focus their offerings on quality rather than quantity, substituting calories nutrients. And they must pay close attention to the labeling, inserting in places clearly visible and the nutritional value: vitamins and minerals, and calories, salt and type of fat it contains, always in accordance with the regulations of the experts.

It would be advisable for both nutrition companies such as pharmaceuticals, rather than trying to find the product or magic pill that gets dissolve or get rid of body fat, invest those resources into promoting healthier products because in the long term all the world would benefit.

Experts say there is no sacrificing taste or hunger, however, with better planning and better understanding and education, we could all eat and our health better appreciate it.

It is true that we live in a hostile environment and it may be that the price that industrialized countries are paid to development. And again, we return to the idea of the principle: during times of shortage we had to overcome malnutrition and anemia to survive, and in times of plenty, obesity fueled by poor diet and wrong accompanied by physical inactivity is the leading cause of death.

One of the considerations would be: if, after many years of development, humans have ignored our most basic principles, we must introduce between our values of moderation, discipline and solidarity. And if mass production lowers prices, we must consume less and help those who are dying to have nothing more than hunger.