Childhood obesity

International Baccalaureate World Literature

How Does The Childhood Obesity Rates Compare in Wales and USA

Intro

I have chosen the issue of childhood obesity in Wales and America. I have chosen this issue as obesity is a main problem in today’s society, and I want to see how Wales compares to what is known as the ‘Fattest’ country, America. Also I hope to find out the main reasons behind the high or low rates in obesity. This topic interests me as it has a big impact on today’s youth, and I as a rugby player would prefer to see more people out exercising than sitting in the house eating.

Aims

For my investigation I have found both secondary and primary information. My secondary information is from various sources off the internet. This will help me find out the information I need such as rates of obesity in Wales and USA, and also give me a better understanding of the issue. I will use facts and figures from my research to give a clear outlook of childhood obesity.

For my primary information I produced a questionnaire to hand out to a range of people. Twenty five of these questionnaires will be given out to children aged eleven to sixteen, and the other twenty five will be handed to adults. This will give me a two different view points which could contrast or be very similar. From this I should be able to see what the main cause of childhood obesity is, and shall show my findings in graph form to show clearly my results.

I will show a clear understanding of the issue chosen by looking at both view points (adult and children), this will give me a balanced view and not a bias one. I shall also then produce an overall conclusion about my investigation and evaluate the quality of my findings too.

Issue

Childhood obesity has nowadays become a serious health matter world wide.

“Obesity is an abnormal accumulation of body fat, usually 20% or more over an individual's ideal body weight. Obesity is associated with increased risk of illness, disability, and death.” [www.answer.com]

Even though obesity does not affect every child, it is becoming more increasing. Also with obesity comes health problems, maybe not straight away but in the future, these problems could be such things as diabetes, heart disease, cholesterol and heart attacks which could lead to an early death. In today’s world many people had a part to play in the rising obesity figures. Today's reliance on cheap convenience and fast foods make it easy to consume large amounts of calories and they are well advertised to children. Only a very few children are overweight due to medical problems. Parents may be feeding their child too much at a young age, therefore making them obese before they have a choice of what to eat and what not to eat, from this when the grow up a bit they may feel depressed and look to food for comfort, only making the problem worse. Another reason is that in schools the amount of physical activity has dropped, with more children getting lifts to school too, and children now prefer to sit on the computer or watch the T.V. than going out and playing.

Secondary Research

For my secondary research I planed to find rates of obesity for both Wales and America, and see how much/if the rates have risen through the years. I am expecting to find an increase over the years and hopefully find an explanation to why this is happening. Also I plan to find out if the government has any plans to try help this issue and decrease the rates. I hope to find that most information gives the similar answers, so I can then find out who is most responsible for the rates increasing.

The figures of ...

This is a preview of the whole essay

Secondary Research

The figures of childhood obesity all over Europe are rising quickly, and up to 400,000 deaths each year in Europe are linked to excess weight. In America it has 25,814 deaths related to obesity a year, this is close to the European number for just one country. Therefore proving obesity is a huge problem within today’s everyday life.

In Wales around 10% of six year olds are obese, with it rising to 17% of 15 year olds being obese. It is said that Welsh children are now among the fattest in the world, aged ten to fifteen years old. With the United Kingdom number three in the world with 23% of the population being classed as obese.

(information from http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_obe-health-obesity)

America is rated the number one for obesity in the whole world, with a 30.6% of the population being classed as obese. Also it has had its own T.V. documentary show done on it, “Super Size Me” which shows what Americans eat and the drastic damage it can do to your body.

I have found from my research that child obesity is a major issue in Wales and more so, America. There needs to be drastic changes to try solve this problem, yet there doesn’t seem anyone/any organisation big enough to do so. However, there are small changes over world that I have noticed, such as schools taking out more fatty foods and bringing in new healthy options to take there place. This started with Jamie Oliver going round Britain looking at school dinners and then giving the children a new healthy option. Also from my research I have found that in both America and Wales the main cause seems to be an unhealthy diet combined with a lack of exercise. High-calorie foods such as chocolates, sweets and fast food are cheap and readily available to children. Alongside this, physical activity and exercise are no longer a part of most children's days - some children never walk or cycle to school or play sport. Instead, many of them spend hours in front of a television or computer. With this being the main cause it seems that the parents are also to be blamed for not controlling or joining in with activities in their children’s lives, if this is the case it may be a hard trend to get out of.

Primary Research

For my primary research I decide to produce 50 questionnaires to hand out, twenty five went to children aged eleven to sixteen and twenty five to adults. I have done this to try give a balanced view on what people of the area believe the main cause of obesity could be. However I know with questionnaire that you do not always get all of them back completed fully and appropriately, but I cannot let this effect me as it happens to everyone. Fourteen of the adults I asked to complete my questionnaire had children while eleven didn’t, but I found this did not affect my findings significantly.

Below I will show you a few results of my questionnaire in graph form, and also a copy of the questionnaire I gave out.

Who do you think is responsible for the wellbeing of obese children?

(Adults)

Who do you think is responsible for the wellbeing of obese children?

(Children)

As you can see from the graphs, there is a slight trend in who people believe to be responsibility, this is the parents. However from the adult graph you can see that parents come second behind cheap foods, but this could be that the parents asked did not feel it was their fault and felt it was someone else’s.

What do you believe the main cause for child obesity is?

(Adults)

What do you believe the main cause for child obesity is?

(Children)

From the above graphs you can see most adults saw junk food being the main cause for obesity, then parental control. I agree with this as junk food has become more advertised and easier to get hold of in today’s society, and with lack of parental control over their children they give in to them and let them have junk food or let them watch the T.V. instead of controlling them and giving them the healthy option and time slots for video gaming. However, in the children’s graph you can see they feel the school meals are to blame. I disagree with my findings here as I believe the children who have done the questionnaire have been more boas towards the rest of the options and not voted for them as much as it is what they like in today’s life. Instead of going out, they prefer to sit in watching T.V. instead of eating healthy, they snack on junk foods. I find the adults graph to be more realistic in finding the main cause, but to get a balanced opinion I had to look at what children in my age range thought.

Conclusion

After looking over all my findings from both my primary and secondary research I have been able to come to a valid conclusion on the topic I chose to look at, Childhood Rates of Obesity in Wales and USA.

It is easy to say that America is most obese country out of the two, with it being ranked number one for obesity in the whole world, with 30.6% of the population being obese. I found that childhood obesity can be caused by a number of issues. Firstly the way children are brought up; if they are brought up on junk food it is hard to get out of this bad habit and they will carry on this into their adulthood and then carrying it on to their children. Another reasons is the bombardment of fast food and its advertisement, this entices people to go to a fast food restaurant like McDonalds which is full of unhealthy foods that some people chose to live off instead of making a healthy meal in their house.

In Wales the rates may not be as high as America, but they are still a great deal of children classed as obese. This has become a bigger problem in Britain over the past few years, with Britain being number 3 in the world rankings for obesity.

However, there has been some Government work towards solving this problem such as change in school meals and healthier advertisements for restaurants like Pizza Hut and McDonalds, but most people feel this isn’t enough and more work could be done to help.

Evaluation

I encountered a number of problems during my research for both secondary and primary research. With my primary research the main problem I had was getting the questionnaires back in fully completed, also once in I was able to see that some may have been done quickly and not completed seriously. The main problem with the secondary research was finding appropriate websites that can be trusted and give valid information. With so much on obesity it was difficult to find the right sources, however once found it was relatively simple to extract the information needed. Another problem that occurred was the size of both countries, Wales being a tiny country compared to America so it was hard to compare the rates in both.

Overall though, I felt my investigation went well and what I believed was true, that USA was higher in childhood obesity than Wales. If I had to do this investigation again I would change two parts to what I have done, firstly I would have chosen a different country to USA due to its size over Wales, now looking back I think it would have been better to have pick a country such as France. The other change to my investigation would be with the questionnaire, I would ask more people to try get a wider picture instead of a small amount which may not be an accurate opinion of the country in hand.

Websites Used

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/2997940.stm

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/pubs/pubd/hestats/overweight/overwght_child_03.htm

http://www.obesityrates.net/category/obesity-in-america/

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_obe-health-obesity

http://www.answer.com

By Rhys Evenden