If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

With rates for obesity continuing to rise in many Western countries it is no surprise that we are seeing more and more overweight children. Of course the effects of childhood obesity are all too obvious, but precisely what produces childhood obesity?

The answer is that there is no single cause of childhood obesity and there are a number of factors that produce obesity in children.

For instance, it is normally the case that a child with overweight or obese parents will be overweight which suggests that there may well be an inherited or genetic element to obesity. But, though this is an area which is currently being looked at, no clear genetic link has been established so far and it is felt far more likely that it is the diet and eating habits within the family that cause obesity rather than genetics.

We have seen a marked shift in eating habits over recent years with fast food restaurants appearing on every corner, junk food available everywhere and our supermarket shelves packed with ‘convenience’ foods that are more often than not extremely high in sugar. The days of home cooked meals are long gone in the majority of homes and have been superceded by take-away food or microwave meals. In fact, an increasing number of parents are now choosing to take their children out to eat rather than to cook meals at home not just because it is simpler than cooking a meal but also because it saves a lot of washing up!

We have also experienced a very significant fall in activity levels amongst many groups of children, spurred on in no small degree by the introduction of home computers, video games and now the ubiquitous mobile phone. Unsurprisingly, as activity levels have fallen so children have lost their normal ability to burn up the calories gained from eating more and more junk food.

The Internet, magazines, television and other forms of media also play a role as they dominate our childrens’ lives and junk food, fast food and confectionary manufacturers are not slow in jumping onto this bandwagon and take full advantage of the advertising opportunity provided by the media. A lot of people argue that advertising has done more to fuel the rise in childhood obesity than almost anything else in the past few years.

There are also a number of social factors at play in our modern world and many children today will simply eat as a result of boredom. They will also turn to food if they find themselves angry, stressed, depressed or anxious.

At the moment a lot of research is being aimed at the cause of childhood obesity and its treatment and the majority of this research is aimed at finding a solution to the problem through a combination of diet and exercise once confronted with an obese child. But, with child obesity continuing to grow at a disturbing rate, and with the obvious dangers of childhood obesity, perhaps the time has come to tackle the roots of the problem and to prevent our children from becoming obese in the first place.