Why so many people are becoming fat these days? A Hot Topic

[James]

A hot topic for discussion every where is, why so many people are becoming fat and obese these days? The primary factor responsible for obesity becoming so common is change, in the life styles of obese people. The fault associated with the life style is shift from healthy food to junk food rich in fats and lacking nutrition value, besides absence of physical activity or exercise, to make up the physical activity.

Obesity in Children:

Various studies conducted reveal that the obesity is spreading as an epidemic affecting all age groups even the school going kids. An overweight kid grows up to an obese adult. The incidence of obesity in children has increased three times as compared with the situation around twenty years ago. One finds among a group of five children one is obese.

If the children are not accustomed to eating healthy food in the early age, they have no liking for healthy food in the later period. They prefer to take junk food dispensed by the vending machines at schools and in the market. They never get the habit of taking health food till they find themselves having become obese, which now requires drastic measures of taking fat free food besides lot of physical activity to lose weight.

The period around 30 years before there were hardly one or two overweight students in the class, where as now it is observed that obesity has affected children of low income population also, which was a rare occurrence in the past.

This all is related to the poor nutrition and lack of physical activities in obese children. When poor nutrition is there, body demands more food resulting into overeating of unhealthy food. It is a vicious circle in which one gets trapped an underlying cause of obesity.

Obesity in Adult Population:

There is increase in emotional stress of a person due to many up and down situations in life of a person, which can be due to interpersonal relations at place of work, or at home. These occurrences can upset the mood and behavior of a person.

To compensate for the circumstantial or environmental imbalance, one is drawn to habit of drinking, overeating. Since one gets disturbed after drinking and overeating next events are going to sleep, getting up late in the morning and rushing back to place of work facing the same monotonous environment.

Time Spent in TV viewing:
The present day scenario that a family spends more time in viewing the TV, playing video games and taking packaged snacks, when the excitement of viewing increases or they see the advertisement of their favorite snack on the TV screen, they are reminded of the snack lying in the cupboard.

The packaged snacks are nothing more than empty calories loaded with refined carbohydrates, fats and salt. These calories get added up to the food, which is taken as three principal meals.

In addition to above life style factors, there are genetic and hormonal factors, which are responsible for obesity present in the population.

Obesity is never present alone. There are a number of diseases, which a person gets afflicted as consequence of obesity like diabetes, blood pressure, stroke, heart diseases, joint problems etc.

It is observed that today’s socio economic conditions have a positive role in occurrence of obesity in both children and adults, which can be rectified by understanding the root cause of obesity and rectifying the nutritional status of the family besides participating in increased physical activities both by children and adults.