I decided to read an article titled Childhood obesity and schools: evidence from the National Survey of Children’s Health by Li J. Hooker. This article talked a lot about childhood obesity and the problems that are arising in schools and the issues that it are ultimately causing them. The article also talked about obesity and it’s relation to school type and a school’s breakfast and lunch programs that might be playing an important factor in childhood obesity, even though most schools are trying to prevent it. The article then later went on to show the relation to children who are active and participate in sports and children who are not active and are non-athletes and how these two either lessen obesity or contribute to obesity and how they relate to success in the classroom. But lastly the main focus of the article was really to figure out if public or private school children had a lower body mass index meaning which schools were ultimately less obese.
Basically the first part of the article covered the importance of obesity, especially childhood obesity and what it could do to that individual later on in life in regards to health issues. Numerous studies that have been conducted over time and recently have shown an alarming jump in childhood obesity and it’s continuance on the rise. The article also mentioned that obesity is truly a major problem and health issue in our country because of the fact that it leads to other life-threatening diseases like heart disease and type 2 diabetes. Schools have also been looked at in a greater context to ultimately see if they were doing the right things when it came to childhood obesity.
Obviously childhood obesity is a major problem in our world, specifically the United States. I did not realize that childhood obesity led to so many other health problems besides the two big ones of heart disease and type 2 diabetes. Schools definitely need to clean up this issue and really get a hold of it because we cannot continue on this trend. The fact that some school districts are even thinking about cutting physical education class are obviously crazy, if that were to happen this problem would get enormously worse.
The next part of the article talked about public school children versus private school children and their relationship to being physically active. Not surprisingly both public and private school students have a positive relationship between being physically fit and active which led to better academic achievement. The article also mentioned that breakfast and lunch programs in schools really did not provide children a benefit in being healthier but showed a little decline in health. Studies showed that what children eat when they are at home has an influence on their health status and their obesity too. The studies also showed that a family’s socio-economic status also plays a big role in children if they were eating healthy or not.
This part of the article surprised me a little but also showed some positive sides to it also. The positive aspect of this part was that children showed a positive relationship between physical active and being active that translated into positive school success. That was good to see because it showed that being physically active not only helps children health wise and lower obesity rates, but also enables children to work even better in a typical classroom setting. The part about the breakfast and lunch in schools also surprised me a bit because of how school breakfast and lunch programs were probably unhealthier and contributed to childhood obesity.
The last part of the article went over some results and findings through studies that schools had conducted to see and learn more about childhood obesity. The results showed that regardless of socio-economic status, children attending public schools have a higher BMI than those attending private schools. The breakfast and lunch programs at public schools also contribute to a child’s BMI. Children attending public schools are more likely to be overweight.
This article definitely made me realize just how big of an issue childhood obesity really is in not only our school system but also a school’s breakfast and lunch programs. I did however like that students showed a positive relationship with physical activity and being in shape which contributed to their success in a normal classroom. I also found it amazing that we constantly talk about childhood obesity and what schools need to do in order to prevent it, and yet it’s our own school’s breakfast and lunch programs that contribute to this problem. Hopefully everyone can work together and have public schools look at how private schools have less obesity rates and try to enhance their own programs with private schools ideas, because private school are definitely doing some things right that public schools need to pick up on.
Joe Stevens
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