Childhood Obesity Childhood obesity is one of the most prevalent issues that needs to be alleviated. Children have to comprehend that if they keep on consuming fattening foods, their chances of developing diseases such as Type 2 Diabetes increases significantly. I am proposing a solution to prevent childhood obesity. The proposal is to spread awareness of this epidemic by educating parents and their children about the dangers of obesity and how to prevent it. Every school should have a mandatory half an hour class that teaches students about eating healthy and the importance of exercising regularly. This proposal is aimed towards elementary school children and their parents. The genre for this piece is a newspaper article. The proposal can be published in magazines, newspaper, internet, and it can even be broadcasted on local channels to increase awareness of this social issue. The readers should be aware of the fact that there is a significant difference between the words overweight and obese. Overweight means that the individual weighs more than normal. On the other hand, obese means that the individual is extremely overweight. The Institute of Medicine states “over the past three decades, the childhood obesity rate has more than doubled for preschool children aged 2-5 years, and adolescents aged 12-19 years, and it has more than tripled for children aged 6-11 years.” In 2004, about 9 million children over the age of 6 were considered obese. In 2005, the percent of
Mahajan 2 children who were overweight was about 25% and the percent of children who were obese was 11% (Nutritional Journal). However, these numbers had dramatically changed within a year. In 2006 The Alliance for a Healthier Generation reported that 17.1% of children were obese in the United States. That’s a horrifying 5.9% increase in just a year. After analyzing the trend