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.