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Childhood Obesity in America Essay examples

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It’s a scary feeling when climbing a simple flight of stairs only to reach the top and be completely out of breath. In America today this is the reality that many children face. Obesity has become an epidemic in our world, it has many contributing factors, affects learning abilities but there are preventive methods for it. Although little is being done about obesity, it's affecting the lives of many but mostly children and by a multitude of different factors. The rising numbers of obese children has reached an alarming rate. With many Americans, “…‘obesity’…carries the connotation of being extremely overweight. [But] health professionals define overweight as an excess amount of body weight that includes muscle, bone, fat and water; …show more content…

If the pollutants are altering body cells certain parts of the body may not grow properly and more fat would be produced where it doesn’t belong. When these “…chemicals [are present] in the mom’s blood, such as DDE (a by product of the now widely banned pesticide DDT, which lingers in the environment decades later, and is still found in small amounts in many foods such as meat, dairy, and fish)” can alter the development of the fetus and cause problems later in life (1). The children of whom mothers’ had this chemical in their blood while pregnant are even more at risk for obesity without even having bad eating habits. Equally important are the affects it has on children's health and learning. A child's learning ability and overall health can be affected by them being overweight. Some of the obese and overweight "...children are developing conditions and diseases that normally would be associated with adults, such as high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol, ...type 2 diabetes...occurrence of certain cancers, including colon cancer..." (Andrews 2). Along with these conditions and diseases many children are also faced with "...social discrimination" from their peers and the people around them (2). In schools "...overweight students showed 0.4 lower GPA and 11% lower national percentile reading scores... also [they] had significantly more detentions, poorer school attendance,

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