Child and Adolescent Obesity Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Child and Adolescent Obesity - Essay Example After discussing the causes underlying rising obesity, the authors refer to the outcomes of obesity in children's current and future social and biological life. They further relate the enhanced obesity with certain psychological disorders in a children's life. Thus, the book is a broad in scope and draws a classical outlook to childhood obesity by referring to its causes and consequences in terms of physical and societal problems, and probable steps to be undertaken for prevention and management. The book signifies the complexness of the subject and therefore proves to be a valuable and informative guide for everyone associated with childhood obesity. Susan has based this book upon the idea of fighting back the ever-rising monster of childhood obesity. She presents important statistics arousing concerns for the Americans as 'the fattest generation' and pinpoints the negative impact it has on health of children. Susan views and projects several adverse consequences of obesity on health and social lives children including inferiority complex and investigates various causes underlying it. She regards unhealthy eating habits and "couch potato" attitudes as the major factors causing obesity. She is of the view that physical activities seem to be severely diminishing in the society leading to an inactive lifestyle: The lifestyle of most U. S. ... S. children today is far more sedentary than that of kids who grew up a few decades ago. The reasons are many and include sprawling suburbs; cutbacks in school physical education programs; work schedules that prevent many parents from being available to supervise after-school play; the lure of the passive entertainment provided by television, computers, and video games (118). She propounds several ways to overcome obesity and informs parents and families of effective programs undertaken for this purpose. She regards reduction in non-physical activities as the essence of this fight-back: "a key initial goal for many families might be reducing the time kids (and adults) spend watching TV, sitting at the computer, and playing video games each week and substituting other, more active ways to have fun" (119). JOURNAL ARTICLES Subrahmanyam, Kaveri, et al. The Impact Of Home Computer Use On Children's Activities And Development. Children And Computer Technology. 10.2 (2000): 123-144. Subrahmanyam's article investigates into the possible impacts of increased computer use among the American children. In the beginning of the article, he raises concerns about the increased access of US kids to the home computers and notes the arguments raised by the proponents of enhanced computer use among children. After that, he proposes probable harmful impingements of home computer use among children. He also relates enhanced computer usage to the minimization of healthful physical activities on the part of the children and uses several studies and evidences supporting his argument. He says: It appears that greater access to home computers may actually be increasing children's total "screen time," that is, time spent using a computer, playing video games, and watching