Outline

Introduction

-Thesis Statement: Childhood obesity has many causes such as lack of proper nutrition in the home and school settings, lack of exercise, and poor nutritional models being set by the parents , in addition to a lack of knowledge about nutrion by parents. All of these causes have a negative impact on the mental and physical health of children.

 -Get audience to care: While childhood obesity can be found around the world it is extrenely common within our own country. Obesity is currently considered to be the most prevalent nutritional disease of children and adolescents in the United States (Etelson).  In order for childhood obesity prevention to be successful it will require participation by the parents.

Definitions:

·         Obesity: Obesity is an abnormal accumulation of body fat, usually 20% or more over an individual's ideal body weight. Obesity is associated with increased risk of illness, disability, and death.

·         Overweight: weighing too much or more than is considered normal or proper.

·         Portion: an amount of food served for one person; serving; helping.

·         Calorie: a unit of food energy.

Review of Literature

·         The article "Childhood obesity: public-health crisis, common sense cure," written by Cara B Ebbeling, PhD, Dorata B Pawlak, PhD, and Dr. David S Ludwig, MD, discusses prevalence of childhood obesity and the potential causes of childhood obesity.  They attribute many of the causes of childhood obesity to environmental factors.  They also discuss the many negative effects that childhood obesity has on the child's life.  In order to present their argument the authors use a wide variety of information that covers and supports all of their claims. The authors also bring up several possible solutions in order to help eliminate the problem of childhood obesity.  The authors present their information in a very clear and concise manner.

·         In their book, Obesity in Childhood and Adolescence,  H. Dele Davies, Hiram E. Fitzgerald, and Vasiliki Mousouli discuss some of the causes of childhood obesity.  They propose that environmental and genetic factors play a large role in the issue of childhood obesity. They discuss how the increase of portion size over the last 40 years has led portions to be of an excessive size that now need to be reduced.  The consequence of these larger portion sizes is that they are leading to a higher caloric intake.  In order to support their claims the authors provide significant data from a variety of sources.

·         In their article, "Childhood Obesity, Prevalence, and Prevention," Mahshid Dehghan, Noori Akhtar-Danesh, and Anwar T. Merchant analyze the ways in which childhood obesity is caused and the ways in which it can be prevented.  They start off strongly in their article, bringing up statistics that show exactly how prevalent childhood obesity is. In the prevention section of the article the authors discuss that there will have to be primary and secondary methods of prevention in order to control and reduce the amount of childhood obesity that is currently prevalent.  In order to support their ideas the authors provide a variety of sources to support their ideas for childhood obesity prevention.

·         Louisa J. Ellis, BSc, PhD wrote an article, entitled "Prevention of Childhood Obesity," that discusses the root causes of childhood obesity and many ways in which it can be prevented.  She suggests that childhood obesity be better monitored in order to prevent it from becoming a problem.  In order to support her ideas she discusses in depth the manners in which this disease is caused, and the variety of ways in which it can prevented.

·         Thomas N. Robinson,  MD, MPH discusses some of the plausible causes of childhood obesity in his article "Does Television Cause Childhood Obesity?". He presents statistics showing the amount of television viewed by children of the current generation, compared to the children of previous generations. He also discusses some techniques for preventing childhood obesity. In order to make his paper effective he presents a variety of statistics from many credible sources.

·         Within their article “Childhood Obesity: Do Parents Recognize this health risk” Debra Etelson, Donald A. Brand, Patricia A. Patrick, and Anushree Shirali evaluate parents understanding of their child’s excess weight as a health risk, and determined whether or not parents were able to recognize obesity within their own child.  They used an anonymous questionaire that was handed out during well-care check ups at pediatric offices. A parent’s perception of their child was considered to be accurate if it deviated from the child’s growth chart by less than 30 points.  It was determined that majority of parents failed to realize that their children were overweight or obese.

Argument/Analysis

Within my research I have determined that there are wide variety of cause of childhood obesity.  However it is evident that the only real solution to the problem will be getting the parents involved and ensuring that they are educated. It is also going to be necessary for the parents to provide their children with positive role models. Every author backed up their claims with statistics and data that demonstrated the ways in which childhood obesity is caused and the ways in which parents are lacking knowledge about childhood obesity.

Conclusion 

In order to bring an end to childhood obesity, educating parents as well as the children will be vital. Parents play an important role if their child's lives up until that child moves out of their home.  Parents need to be providing their children with proper nutrition and setting good nutritional role models. It will be necessary to have a combination of support from the parents, the school districts, and the government in order to put a stop to childhood obesity.

Rough Draft

Childhood obesity has many causes such as lack of proper nutrition in the home and school settings, lack of exercise, and poor nutritional models being set by the parents. All of these causes have a negative impact on the mental and physical health of children. While childhood obesity can be found around the world it is most prevalent within our own country, the United States of America.
       While growing up children consumes most of their meals in the academic setting, cafeterias across the country are not currently providing enough nutritious foods.  Even though there are nutritious foods available there are still a plethora of fatty foods available.  Currently the nutritious options are available but they are not mandatory, as they should be. 
      There is also a lack of exercise found in today’s youth.  This generation is the generation of the television and videogames.  Thomas N. Robinson, MD, MPH discusses this issue within his article, "Does Television Cause Childhood Obesity?.” He presents statistics showing the amount of television viewed by children of the current generation is significantly higher than the children of previous generations.  Recess, within schools,  is a crucial part of a child’s day and is being removed or shortened at many schools across the country, in order to try and keep the child in the classroom and provide them with more hours in the day that are used solely for learning. There is also a lack of exercise present within the high schools across the country; in many schools it is not mandatory to take a gym class.  My high school offered the option of being excused from gym by taking a health class.  While I am capable of seeing the merits that a health class has to offer, I believe that our overweight society would benefit from a mandatory gym class. 
        As a country, the United States is home to millions of obese adults, many of these adults have children.  These obese parents are setting a negative example for their children, simply giving them the false idea that it is socially acceptable, and healthy to live an overweight life.   Our society is filled with obese people and it has skewed our perception as to what is simply overweight and what is considered obese.  Our skewed vision leads us to view people who are medically deemed obese as simply overweight.  There is also a lack of portion control within a child’s meal.  In their book, Obesity in Childhood and Adolescence,  H. Dele Davies, Hiram E. Fitzgerald, and Vasiliki Mousouli discuss some of the causes of childhood obesity. They discuss how the increase of portion size over the last 40 years has led portions to be of an excessive size that now need to be reduced. The portion sizes need to be reduced for several reasons. One of these reasons is that larger portion sizes are leading to a higher caloric intake.  Another reason that portion sizes need to be reduced is that the human stomach is roughly the size of two human fists.  This means that humans should not be consuming entire plates of food that are comparable to the size of the human head.  This is a problem within schools as well as within the homes of America. 
       There are many people currently working on coming up with a solution for childhood obesity.  Due to the prevalence and extreme cases found within our country it is very difficult to come up with a plausible solution to the problem.   If this problem is not solved society will continue to produce overweight and obese children who will grow up to be overweight and obese adults.  Overweight and obese people are found to lead far less healthy and far more unhappy lives than those who are of a healthy weight.

Three more Precis

Thomas N. Robinson,  MD, MPH discusses some of the plausible causes of childhood obesity in his article "Does Television Cause Childhood Obesity?". He presents statistics showing the amount of television viewed by children of the current generation, compared to the children of previous generations. He also discusses some techniques for preventing childhood obesity. In order to make his paper effective he presents a variety of statistics from many credible sources.

Louisa J. Ellis, BSc, PhD wrote an article, entitled "Prevention of Childhood Obesity," that discusses the root causes of childhood obesity and many ways in which it can be prevented.  She suggests that childhood obesity be better monitored in order to prevent it from becoming a problem.  In order to support her ideas she discusses in depth the manners in which this disease is caused, and the variety of ways in which it can prevented.


In their article, "Childhood Obesity, Prevalence, and Prevention," Mahshid Dehghan, Noori Akhtar-Danesh, and Anwar T. Merchant analyze the ways in which childhood obesity is caused and the ways in which it can be prevented.  They start off strongly in their article, bringing up statistics that show exactly how prevalent childhood obesity is. In the prevention section of the article the authors discuss that there will have to be primary and secondary methods of prevention in order to control and reduce the amount of childhood obesity that is currently prevalent.  In order to support their ideas the authors provide a variety of sources to support their ideas for childhood obesity prevention.

In their book, Obesity in Childhood and Adolescence,  H. Dele Davies, Hiram E. Fitzgerald, and Vasiliki Mousouli discuss some of the causes of childhood obesity.  They propose that environmental and genetic factors play a large role in the issue of childhood obesity. They discuss how the increase of portion size over the last 40 years has led portions to be of an excessive size that now need to be reduced.  The consequence of these larger portion sizes is that they are leading to a higher caloric intake.  In order to support their claims the authors provide significant data from a variety of sources.

Working Thesis

Childhood obesity has many causes such as lack of proper nutrition in the home and school settings, lack of exercise, and poor nutritional models being set by the parents. All of these causes have a negative impact on the mental and physical health of children.

Childhood Obesity

The problem that I will be discussing in my paper is the issue of childhood obesity and the negative impacts it has on a child’s physical and mental health.  While childhood obesity can be found around the world it is most prevalent within our own country, the United States of America.  There are many causes more this issue.  Some of these causes are lack of proper nutrition at home and in schools, lack of exercise at school and at home, poor nutrition model set by the parents and a lack of portion control.  While growing up children consumes most of their meals in the academic setting, cafeterias across the country are not currently providing enough nutritious foods.   Even though there are nutritious foods available there are still a plethora of fatty foods available.  Currently the nutritious options are available but they are not mandatory, as they should be.  There is also a lack of exercise found in today’s youth.  This generation is the generation of the television and videogames.  Recess is a crucial part of a child’s day and is being removed or shortened at many schools across the country, in order to try and keep the child in the classroom and provide them with more hours in the day that are used solely for exercising.  I also believe that gym classes should be mandatory all the way through the education system.  My high school offered the option of being excused from gym by taking a health class.  While I am capable of seeing the merits that a health class has to offer, I think that our overweight society would benefit far more from a mandatory gym class.  As a country, the United States is home to millions of obese adults, many of these adults have children.  These obese parents are setting a negative example for their children, simply giving them the false idea that it is socially acceptable, and healthy to live an overweight life.   Our society is filled with obese people and it has skewed our perception as to what is simply overweight and what is considered obese.  Our skewed vision leads us to view people who are medically deemed obese as simply overweight.  There is also a lack of portion control within a child’s meal.  The human stomach is roughly the size of two human fists.  This means that humans should not be consuming entire plates of food that are comparable to the size of the human head.  This is a problem within schools as well as within the homes of America.  There are many people currently working on coming up with a solution for childhood obesity.  Due to the prevalence and extreme cases found within our country it is very difficult to come up with a plausible solution to the problem.   If this problem is not solved society will continue to produce overweight and obese children who will grow up to be overweight and obese adults.  Overweight and obese people are found to lead far less healthy and far more unhappy lives than those who are of a healthy weight.

The article "Childhood obesity: public-health crisis, common sense cure," written by Cara B Ebbeling, PhD, Dorata B Pawlak, PhD, and Dr. David S Ludwig, MD, discusses prevalence of childhood obesity and the potential causes of childhood obesity.  They attribute many of the causes of childhood obesity to environmental factors.  They also discuss the many negative effects that childhood obesity has on the child's life.  In order to present their argument the authors use a wide variety of information that covers and supports all of their claims. The authors also bring up several possible solutions in order to help eliminate the problem of childhood obesity.  The authors present their information in a very clear and concise manner.

Chapter 13 Precis

 In chapter 13 Lester Faigley and Jack Selzer  discuss proposal arguments.  They use the example of "Don't Drink and Drive" to reinforce their point.  In order to form a proposal argument it is necessary to identify a problem and offer a solution. In order for this to be effective you have to identify the problem, show who it affects, and offer a solution to fix the problem. They lay out the method of creating a proposal argument in a way that is very simple to understand.