In November 2011 there was a study conducted by Temple University public-health doctoral candidate, Clare Lenhart. The study examined 44,000 teens who were surveyed about their weight, lifestyle, health issues, and how often they exhibited unhealthy behavior, according to Education Week.
It was discovered in the study that many kids want to lose weight, but a lot of them consistently do things that are detrimental to their health like consuming unhealthy snacks and drinks and also smoking.
The study found that of the 44,000 teens, 5,944 of those them were considered to be overweight. The factors for gaining weight were different for females and males. According to the study results, females that wanted to lose weight would exercise for twenty minutes. However, these same females were likely to drink sodas, which counteract their workout. The most common things keeping some males from losing weight is playing video games too much and not exercising.
Lenhart suggests that doctors not only check young people’s weight but keep track of the way young people are losing weight.
It is clear that Lenhart is serious about young people’s health. She suggest that we see how youth work towards losing weight and analyze what they are doing right and what they are doing wrong. Lenhart believes this will help guide teens toward healthier weight loss activities.
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Obesity has been the biggest (no pun intended) word on the street these days. Good thing, because this is a serious topic. I was reading this one article that said in England, the British government wants to mandate exercise for children under five (even those who cant yet walk).
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The following originally aired on KCBS.
By Tajah Jones
Growing up the silly rabbit attempting to steal the yummy colorful box of Trix cereal did tempt me into begging my mom to buy it for me, but she only bought Raisin Bran.
To help prevent child obesity the government proposed new regulations on food advertisements. If the product is unhealthy and targets children then the company needs to make healthier products or stop marketing to children.
This proposal made me wonder: who’s really responsible for filling the pantry with only Cheetos and Oreos?
Instead of pointing fingers at food companies, the government should put money towards educating adults and children on what a balanced meal looks like and how to cook nutritious foods.
Parents are ultimately responsible for the health of their children. My mom was never convinced by my temper tantrums or begging. I couldn’t leave the table if there were still greens on my plate. But now that I understand the importance of a balanced meal I won’t be a victim to obesity.
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This commentary originally aired on WAMU, American University Radio in Washington, D.C.
By Lalaram Guyadin
I remember the first time the cafeteria server put a sealed plastic cup on my tray. I asked my friends what it was. "A fruit cup," they said, laughing. I had never seen anything like it: grapes, peaches, pineapple and pears cut into small squares and put into a cup, weeks or months before being eaten. They looked nothing like the original fruit. And when I tasted it, I realized just how far from home I was.
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In the face of a national epidemic of childhood obesity, a collection of federal agencies has been working for two years now to come up with a set of voluntary guidelines that would restrict what foods can be marketed to kids. Food companies and marketing groups rejected a set of proposed guidelines last year, and the government has repeatedly postponed releasing new ones
The following originally aired on KCBS.
By Ross Andrews
To say that American consumers are being tricked is an understatement.
Like most Americans, I eat packaged foods every day. Fortunately, I have a fast metabolism so I rarely look at the nutrition labels on the foods I eat. But for the majority of Americans who do check labels, many don’t understand the loopholes and intricacies of the labeling system.
The other night my mom brought a microwaveable pizza home for dinner. “I just couldn’t believe how few calories were in this, I just had to buy it!” she said excitedly. Then after eating three quarters of the pizza, I realized that I had eaten two servings amounting to about half my recommended calories for the day.
Shiny labels, exaggerated health claims, and misleading serving sizes, trick us into eating things we shouldn’t. There’s a reason Americans don’t check serving sizes - they don’t make sense. We need to find ways for consumers to make healthy choices. Changing serving sizes on packaged foods to what people actually eat is just the start.
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Beside the environmental benefits of reducing reliance on fossil-fuel-guzzling transportation, eating locally produced food is often healthier. It's clear we need more youth leaders who understand where our food comes from and how their actions can impact human and environmental health. But how to start?
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There’s a reason students at the University of Chicago call it “the place where fun comes to die.” Its students are competitive. Its teachers, unforgiving. In short, the school demands 110 percent from you. Which, I can only imagine, is hard to give when you’re starving.
Natalie developed an eating disorder as soon as she left home for U of C. She skipped meals and purged multiple times a day. She danced 10 hours a week. She couldn’t stop working or start eating. Her behavior became so extreme that she suspected she might have bipolar disorder. At which point she finally decided to go to the university’s student resource center, thinking the staff there could help her overcome whatever psychological problem was keeping her from eating. But she said the counseling center’s health professionals addressed only her body mass index, not her mind.
“My behavior was basically dismissed,” said Natalie, who is now 22 and uses medication and therapy to treat the diagnosed bipolar disorder that she thinks made her anorexia so severe. Each visit to the center was the same. “Before discussing medication or asking me how I was doing, [my doctor] would march me upstairs to the bathroom, weigh me, and then march into her office, where she would whip out a body mass index chart to see if I had crossed the magical line or not.”
Natalie is one of three Chicago alumnae I talked to about coping with eating disorders while attending the academically rigorous college. (Fellow alumnae I should say – I graduated two and a half years ago.) I asked to hear their stories after reading a recent study released by the American Academy of Pediatrics that found eating disorders in young people at levels higher than they’ve ever been. I wanted to know how these disorders play out on college campuses where young people develop unhealthy eating behaviors, and where others bring habits that started in high school.
It turns out the University of Chicago is not alone. According to a recent New York Times article, college campuses across the country are struggling to provide the mental health resources for behavioral problems that take a physical toll, like anorexia and binge drinking.
“The only treatment that we know of that is effective is the restoration of calories and weight,” said Becky Steinhauer, a psychiatrist at the University of Chicago’s health clinic. While medication can help with the psychological symptoms that accompany eating disorders, for the physical ones, Steinhauer says she uses the body mass index (BMI) to calculate whether a student is healthy or not.
But the former students I talked to who struggled with eating disorders said their doctors focused so much on their BMIs, they all but ignored the mental issues they had simultaneously.
We have to think carefully about our environment and what happens to it when we either farm, fish or herd our food. If we hurt our environment too much then it can shift and change the future.
For example, because fishes like tuna and swordfish are in such demand, they are over fished. They also happen to be predators in the sea, the more we fish tuna and swordfish, the populations that these predators usually hunt for are increasing. This results in the food chain being imbalanced.
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