Walking on the street,
we can see more and more obese children. It turns out that every fifth polish
child has problem with obesity.
It's an easy way to
have in future chronic diseases which can decrease their life expectancy. What
are the main reasons of obesity in the young generation?
When a baby is
discovering different things and experimenting with them, it can get addicted
to bad habits easily. I'm speaking about junk food and new technologies, which
also can contribute to the development of obesity. Ready-to-use products, fast
food can make our life easier, but can also lead to ruin our health. Why is
that happening?
Every processed food includes
many food additives like colours, emulsifiers or solid vegetable fat. They are
"empty" and don't have any value for the organism of child. Even
worse, they lead to the production of additional energy, which is one of the
most important factors for the proper functioning of human bodies.
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| Michael Matthews - Bigger Leaner Stronger, chapter 7, page 129 |
The lighter portions
are the periods where your body has excess energy. The darker portions are the
periods when the body has no energy left from food and thus has to burn fat to
stay alive. When the lighter part will be bigger than the darker one, then this
excess energy transforms into fat which is the cause of a child's obesity.
A surplus of energy can
be reduced by feeding children nutritious meals and encouraging them to do some
sport. PE lessons would be an ideal example of physical activity for children
because it's a compulsory subject in every school, but unfortunately it doesn't
work well. Why? Data generated by National Audit Office indicate that as much
as 15% of primary schools' students (from fourth to sixth class), 23% of
secondary schools' students and 30% of high schools' students don't attend PE
classes. Children and youngsters stated
as reasons of avoiding physical exercises: diseases which prevent doing any
intensive physical activity (35%) and unattractive way of teaching (31%).
As we can notice, the
will of attending to PE classes goes down with increased age. To prevent
development of this negative trend, Ministry of Sport and Tourism started
public campaign "Stop exemptions from Physical Education".
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| Source |
The main goal of this
mission was to stop more and more absences on PE classes. In this action took
part famous sportsmen and sportswomen, so additionally it promoted sport as a
trendy way of spending free time.
Did you avoid PE classes? Why?
What are your ways to
keep your bodies in shape?
Do you have any ideas
to encourage the current generation to do sports and resign from daily intake of
junk food?
Sources:
Comments
Now I am very active person. For a long time I was doing running for 10, 15 or even 20 kilometers, but now I can't jog anymore because of injury of a knee - typical problem for runners. Now I go to the gym three times a week.
In my opinion a good idea is the kinect console. It combines some kind of sport and technology. It's perfect for young people know. I have tried playing tennis like this and I must admit that it can be really exhausting entertainment.
I am 25 years old male with 183 cm height and I weight 55 kg. My highest weight ever was 59 kg in high school. So obesity from eating too much or not enough sports is something abstract to me. I do walk a lot though, I can't sit in one place and when I wait for something or just think about something I walk (even few kilometers every day from one side of the room to another).
When I was younger, I was always attending on PE lessons. Of course, there were some situations that I didn't like it. Mostly because of teacher. But at the same time, I knew it's good for me - I was just brought up in this way. After school I practised sport all the time (riding a bike, swimming etc.).
Unfortunatelly, I had colleagues, who avoid sport and PE lessons (like Wojtek). I didn't (and don't now) understand them. To be honest, despite the fact that I treat Wojtek's statement as provocation, I could talk about it for hours (but let's not do it ;)). Of course, I exclude health problems.
For me, sport is important part of life. Thanks to it, I've learned many things such as how to compete, how to behave fair play and - the most important for me - how to schedule my time. I think every child should practise sport, but it depends (as everything at this age) on parents.
But how to teach children if some parents don't understand?
- cardiovascular diseases (mainly heart disease and stroke)
- diabetes
- certain types of cancer
It is truth that some further action should be taken to reverse this trend.
As far as I have noticed, it was quite contrary with girls, they used to split to two groups: the one would enjoy sport and even want to play with us, and the other one would skip the lessons, sit on benches and talk or gossip about something.
What makes me feel great and full of energy and strength is actually moving, exercising and working out, but I don't have so much time currently so I miss the PE classes that I used to have before.
I believe that the teachers should show the youngsters that sport is fun and eating healthy is cool, so they actually want to do it themselves. Maybe bringing a strong man or a fitness specialist twice a term would encourage them so they would meet someone they can look up to?
I dont' think that this is only reason why children are thicker. When I was a child, I didn't spent so much time in front of tv or computer eating sweets, there were another entertainments. Of course when I got a chance, I use it and sit in front of tv/computer all day, but that kind of day was one in a month.
I think that if someone would show children that healhy food is delicious and looks nice they would like to eat it, instead of junk food.
I think often times PE comes to playing football, volleyball or something. Not everyone likes sports hence students miss PE. In my opinion it should focus on endurance training and teaching about healthy eating.
I experienced by myself how bad the junk food can be for me. It's really easy to gain ten kilograms for a couple of months just because of eating that food and don't have enough movement.
I think the main reason of children's obesity are parents who don't have a time to cook a proper food for them.
Still, I'd do anything but actual sport, I'm lazy as ****, and I know it's not healthy to be spending time coding and playing video games, but I find it really hard to actually do some running or anything that involves physical excercise, I guess I'll never enjoy any of that to be honest...
Now I love sports and healthy eating. But at the gym I choose the training by myself and can control the situation.
In my opinion, the problem with children obesity could be easily solved by their parents. If only the parents would understand it and find the time to pay attention to the children's diet.
I've trained shooting on Monday and Saturday, Boxing on Tuesday, Climbing on Thursday and that was my way to keep me fit.
Now I am at school from about 3 months and don't have so much time for all other activities and as I see my belly is starting to grow :) For me also it's hard to resign from junk food. Just way too much of it - but I really don't have time to prepare healthy food as usual.
When I was a kid, I've always tried not to avoid PE classes, but at the time there were no smartphones or tablets that would probably have a big impact on my childhood.
To keep my body in shape I attend the gym at least once a week and I would recommend it to anyone in my age. I like the idea of "Stop exemptions from Physical Education" campaign. I think that promoting the sport as "cool and trendy" is a key to encourage the current generation to be more physically active. The only question is how to make such campaign more effective? Perhaps the social media could help in delivering the message to the right audience.
Personally, I don't like premade food you can buy in a shop, I don't eat meat and I can immediately see the difference in how I feel after eating a hot, home made, valuable meal and how I feel after ordering a greasy pizza. If I had kids I would probably care about healthy food even more.
However, I think PE classes are horrible and I spent half of my year dodging them. I always had an exemption. I never liked sports, especially between math and literature lesson at school. Carrying additional clothes and changing in front of other people was also not something I enjoyed. Ever since I can remember I hated team based sports and it never changed.