Contemporary Issues in Childhood Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words - 1

Contemporary Issues in Childhood - Essay Example Donnelly et al (2000) detail the conditions associated with obesity such as hypertension, dyslipidemia and type 2 diabetes. According to Snorof et al (2004) obese children are physically at risk also for high cholesterol, high blood pressure, cancer, orthopedic problems, sleep apnea, gallbladder disease and other debilitating diseases. These authors also suggest that obese children are prone to psychological and social discrimination. Being obese makes a child a target for taunts from peers and negative reactions from others, leaving the child with hurt feelings and possibly, low self-esteem and depression (Holmes, 1998). The negative effects of obesity can be detrimental to a child’s growth and development, thus, the problem of obesity needs to be confronted early in life and solutions provided. Clearly, overweight children have the potential to become overweight or obese adults and early intervention is needed to reverse this trend (Barnes, 2011). If childhood obesity is ign ored or tolerated because parents do not see the seriousness of its consequences, the health risks are more likely to affect these children, and as they grow into obese adults, the health problems will escalate. Parents need to realize that ignoring the problem of their overweight and obese children may have a great societal impact. This poses as a huge concern for NHS due to the burden that will befall them in terms of costs of caring for obese people with various health complications (NHS, 2011). This strengthens the need for more approaches in handling childhood obesity in order to reduce and prevent the problem from its onset. Before solutions and strategies for tackling obesity can be developed, it is important to know the causes of the problem so these causes are addressed and challenged through the different approaches. Apart from the proliferation of junk food and the media that endorses