Obesity is defined as " The condition of being obese; increased body weight caused by excessive accumulation of fat" (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/obesity). 18% of children today are obese. On the other hand most children are involved in some type of youth sport like pop warner, soccer and very recently lacrosse. In 1987 15 million children played town, club or recreation soccer, in 2002 it went up to 17.5 million. Oner the last 15 years pop warner football has doubled from 130,000 to 260,000! Lastly, in 2005 there was a count of 205,000 youth lacrosse players.
What I'm wondering is, with such a rise in youth sport why is there such a large increase in child obesity? I remember back when I played town soccer it wasn't vigorous or to competitive but, it was a great was to stay active and have fun with kids your own age. If you think about it they have practice 2 - 3 times a week about 1.5 - 2 hours each time. An hour of casual soccer for kids burns between 300 - 350 calories depending how hard the playing is. Playing pop warner football isn't exactly a cake walk itself, about an hour of that can burn more than 400 calories.
So how can kids be obese while burning so much in just an hour? Well first off not all kids participate in youth sports. However why are those who do having such health problems especially with there weight?
For the most part, I consider parents and video games the biggest suspects. Just like youth sport and obesity video games have become more and more popular over the years. In August 2008 1.08 billion dollers worth of hardware, software and accessories were sold. Of course not all of this is being used by just children. Before the days of video games children used to go outside and play instead of sitting in front of the coach playing games and eating all day. The other reason I think children are obese is because of parents. Not all parents know how to eat properly themselves, so how are they supposed to teach their children to eat correctly. Granted the world isn't one day going to be filled with fit people who eat right and exercise regularly, but hopefully we can at least start with the children and get the statistics back the where they should be. There is no reason 18% of children should be obese.
2 comments:
I really enjoyed reading your post. I never really thought about the statistics of children participating in sports compared to the rising number of obese children. I find myself questioning this senario too. Perhaps the rising number of children participating in sports lead to more children on each team and therefore, less playing time? I dont know. I do agree that video games and TV are major contributors. What happened to playing outside all day and using your imagination?
Kate, I loved your article in particularly because it relates directly to what I want to do for my profession, a Physical Education teacher. I hope to influence to children to go home after school and play outside rather than play video games. Strategies I will use is I will stress the importance of physical activity on their health as well as assign homework that will keep them physically active. It's a shame these days that video games are taking over children's free time. When I was growing up my parents always had us playing outside. We would set up kick ball games with the neighbors and play man hunt everyday in the summer time. During the school year we were all signed up for team sports. I'm grateful for being so fortunate and having parents that believe physical activity and nutrition is important. As a future educator in the health field I hope to change this as much as possible, and give children options for physical activity after school.
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