Children are developing unhealthy eating habits
I READ the following in a tabloid and wondered how these statistics would impact on South African children.
“For decades, delighted children have visited Babeny Farm in London to enjoy pony rides across Dartmoor. But… today’s youngsters are too fat for the horses. Owner Dee Dee Wilkinson has made the difficult decision to sell off the farm’s ponies, stating that over the past seven years, obesity has become a big issue.”
This prompted me to research trends and horrifyingly discover that about 20% of South African children are obese, which has dietitians and paediatric endocrinologists in a dilemma.
In the South African context, it seems to be a societal problem. Researchers and health care professionals have noted an increase in lifestyle diseases which affect children: diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, hypertension and even cardiac problems, causing serious morbidity and premature mortality.
The current generation live off pizza, french fries, fizzy drinks and ice creams.
The scenes from movies of a teenager opening the fridge and pouring a glass of milk is a bluff in our world. When last did you hear a teenager ask for a bicycle as a birthday gift? These days the youngsters’ lives are taken over by technology. iPads, tablets, laptops and gaming consoles are just a few in a plethora of new inventions. Children have become couch potatoes. Kids are left unsupervised after school. They develop unhealthy eating habits and tend to gravitate towards junk food. Dinner-time is no better as the tired single parent prepares convenience food, and the “heat and eat” syndrome takes over.
There is a problem even with normal families as sit-down dinner-time is non-existent. Parents are too busy.
Physical education at school level is virtually non-existent.
Oversized children are generally soft-hearted. They are often teased and tormented which results in low self-esteem.
This can lead to a terrible narcissistic injury – a lifetime quest to heal childhood wounds.
Overweight children are susceptible to respiratory tract infections; they get breathless when they play and often have breathing problems at night. They are often tired during the day.
Over-indulgence and sedentary lifestyles are the hallmarks of today’s society where the ubiquity of food dominance is at every level. Society today eats food that is frozen, instant, pre-cooked, dehydrated, tinned, sterilised, pasteurised and preserved, rendering it full of empty calories.
Children dictate consumer shopping patterns too and marketing gurus are very conscious of these trends. Hence we see cartoon characters lavishly strewn across anything from cereal boxes to ice cream tubs.
Maybe we should have more inserts of Pop-Eye eating spinach and showing off his muscles. But that won’t work because children hate spinach. They want pies, hamburgers, potato crisps, and sugary and fizzy drinks!
The problem needs to be tackled with a hands-on approach. We need to urgently adopt preventative strategies in terms of a healthy diet, regular physical activity and substance addiction.