Dangers Of Childhood Obesity

1021 Words5 Pages
Schools across the nation have been focused on our education since we were old enough to read. Nowadays, schools encompass a wide variety of education from athletic to the most controversial, health. Health classes have shown that school-based nutrition education can improve dietary practices that affect young persons' health, growth, and intellectual development. The school systems in the US should have more of a hand in students’ health concerns because it could be bad for self-esteem, basic health classes already create a broad scope of nutritional value and the schools are very influential to children. Obesity is an excess of body fat. Because body fat is difficult to measure, obesity is measured by body mass index, or BMI. BMI is calculated by using a person’s height and weight to a relatively close way to measure obesity. Children of poor physical health can often be targets of early social discrimination. The psychological stress of social stigmatization can cause low self-esteem. Along with that, physical fitness is linked with higher academic achievement ("Lets move!"). Even moderate under nutrition can have lasting effects on children's cognitive development and school performance. Chronically undernourished children attain lower scores on standardized achievement tests, especially tests of language ability ("Guidelines for school," 2001). When children are hungry or undernourished, they have difficulty resisting infection and therefore are more likely than other children to become sick, to miss school, and to fall behind in class; they are irritable and have difficulty concentrating, which can interfere with learning; and they have low energy, which can limit their physical activity ("Guidelines for school," 2001). We’ve grown as a nation to think fast food helps us out. It does but in one way, fast service. The average child should understand that

More about Dangers Of Childhood Obesity

Open Document