Making family activities an affair can really help motivate a child to stay healthy. Running, walking a pet, and going to the park, riding bikes and even some household chores such as vacuuming, raking leaves, cleaning up the yard and washing the family vehicle all count as being active. A child that has good sleeping patterns can also help prevent injuries, diabetes, problems with behavior or attention, and obesity. Kids that don’t receive enough sleep at
night are at high risk for unhealthy weight gain. Screen Time can also be a huge factor that can lead to less sleep, low grades, mental health issues, and weight gain. Limiting screen time to children can help remove cues to eating unhealthy food. Having a low socioeconomic status is one of the biggest risk factors to a child when it comes to obesity, and as the age gap gets larger within our society we can expect the influence of obesity to increase even more. Becoming a parent is a drastic life changing event and it requires a lot of responsibility. Families that have low socioeconomic status are characterized by lack of money, lack of cohesion, awareness, neglect, mental health issues and addiction resulting in insecure and harsh settings for children and young infants. Emotionally rewarding children with junk food is pervasive in our environment. Constantly giving children junk food to children as a reward for behaving or doing what’s right is also what's making children obese. Research also suggests that hedonic responses and adaptations in the brain from eating junk food are similar to drug use. (Ziaudden H. Alonso, Obesity and the neurocognitive basis of food reward and the control of intake adv nutr. 2015; 6(4) 474-486). Disparities by race and ethnicity still persist. In 2020-2021 non hispanic asian children had the lowest obesity rate (10.1%) Followed by non hispanic white children (13.0%) The obesity rates are significantly higher for non hispanic black children (22.0%) and also hispanic children (22.4%). There are also huge differences based on household income. In 2020-2021, obesity rates ranged from 9.2% among youth that are in the wealthiest income group to 24% among youth in
the poorest income group. Living in high poverty areas has been linked to higher prevalence of diabetes and obesity in children. Area based socioeconomic measures including house value, property taxes, and poverty levels, provide a more objective way to assess the wealth or lack of wealth in a neighborhood. When women lose their manufacturing jobs, the economy growth and the growing number of women in the labor
force have been associated with a dramatic sway in family eating habits from mothers not wanting to cook healthy meals and replacing them with snacks and fast food. (Cutler
D.M Why have American Children Become More Obese? NBER working paper no.9446, 2008) There are many foundations and organizations that support lower income families with childhood obesity. The Gastrol Foundation wants to eradicate childhood obesity through research, data driven programming, and to illuminate the crisis of childhood obesity. By overcoming the issues of childhood obesity, the program is attempting to build a world where children can enter adulthood mentally and physically equipped to thrive in. This program focuses on prevention strategies, research and programmatic work
and advocacy. There are many targeted approaches to improving childhood nutrition in
