Entry #8: Tween Obesity

During her husband’s presidency, Michelle Obama has been on a mission to combat childhood obesity with her Let’s Move! Campaign. Let’s Move! looks to end childhood obesity through education and common sense practices both at home and in schools. Met with mixed opinions amongst political parties, the campaign nevertheless has brought attention to the growing health concerns facing the youth today.

While not specific to tweens, the issue of obesity is still a major concern. Lightwood et al. (2009) looked to connect adolescent obesity with that of adult obesity, thereby increasing medical costs, health issues and lack of nutrition. Additionally, cites like the CDC cites the growing increase of obesity with a growth from 5.0% to 18.1% in 12 – 19 year olds from 1980 to 2008.

The Let’s Move! campaign looks to educate families, children and educators through calculations such as Body Mass Index (BMI), food and nutrition guidelines, physical activity ideas, and simple steps to start. Additionally, the program relays reasons for losing weight stating the increased chances of heart disease, Type 2 Diabetes, Asthma, Sleep Apnea and social discrimination.

While these programs are good for raising awareness, actual implementation might be somewhat flawed. The program uses BMI to calculate obesity, and while this is the traditional tool, it does not take into account bone structure, and athletes with growing muscles. Additionally, I find fault in the website’s generalization that social discrimination will occur if a person is obese. Tweens go through weight gains and weight losses throughout maturation, with girls and boys both gaining weight either through puberty or muscle. Focusing on the fact that you will be made fun of or discriminated against, while possible, to me would not be a motivating factor for losing weight.

Nevertheless, I agree with Let’s Move! in the fact that education must occur at the parent and school level. Children and tweens especially are dependent upon adults for food and to a certain degree physical activity, thus by providing youth with healthy opportunities and leading by example will bring awareness to the cause.

Resources
Center for Disease Control. (2011). Healthy youth!. Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/obesity/index.htm

Let’s Move!. (2011). Let’s move! America’s move to raise a healthier generation of kids. Retrieved from http://www.letsmove.org

Lightwood, J., Bibbins-Domingo, K., Coxson, P., Wang, Y., Williams, L., et al.(2009). Forecasting the future economic burden of current adolescent overweight: An estimate of the coronary heart disease policy model. American Journal of Public Health, 99(12), 2230 – 2237. Retrieved from ProQuest.