Diet & Obesity: Understanding the Connection

posted on Mar 15, 2023

Obesity is one of the fastest-growing public health concerns worldwide. While obesity was primarily a health problem identified in adults in earlier years, it has now started affecting kids too. The rising obesity cases in children is a worrying trend because obesity is associated with numerous health problems like diabetes, certain types of cancer, heart disease, joint pain, etc. While no one factor is responsible for obesity in kids, the primary reason is their diet.

This is why we at Gurukul The School, ranked among the top 10 CBSE schools in Ghaziabad, always encourage our students to prefer healthy meals loaded with fresh fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and more nutritious food items over unhealthy junk food. As parents, if you’ve started noticing a sudden weight gain in your kids, the reason can be their unhealthy diet. Obesity in kids is significantly related to diet, and this article explains how. So, let’s quickly delve into it without any further ado.

Understanding the Basics – What is Obesity?

Some confuse being overweight with being obese. For the uninitiated, obesity is a condition wherein your body accumulates excessive fat to a level that starts negatively affecting your overall health. Measuring a kid’s BMI can determine whether they’re obese or overweight. BMI is an accurate measure of one’s body weight relative to an individual’s height. If your kid’s BMI is between 25 to 30, the kid is overweight, but if the BMI exceeds 30, the kid is obese. A healthy BMI range is between 18.5 to 25.

Is There a Connection Between Obesity and Diet?

Yes! One’s diet plays a massive role in developing obesity. If your kid is consuming a high-calorie diet regularly that has low nutritional value, your kid will eventually develop obesity after some time. Today’s kids mostly consume sugary beverages, junk food, processed food, and items high in saturated fat, sugar, and sodium. These food items have little nutritional value and contribute to obesity in many children.

If you don’t interrupt this diet pattern, these food items can affect your little one’s metabolism, making it more challenging for your kids to burn calories and lose weight. As a result, the kids will get trapped in a vicious cycle of harmful eating habits and unhealthy weight gain. Thus, a piece of advice from us at Gurukul The School in this regard would be to ensure that even though it’s not possible for you to put a complete restriction on the intake of junk food for your kids, begin by limiting the consumption of food items to once a month. Try replacing them with healthy, home-cooked meals that are not just high in nutrition and good for overall health but are also equally or even more tasty.

Preventing Kid’s Obesity is in Parent’s Hands

Children don’t have proper nutrition knowledge, so they tend to eat whatever pleases their taste buds. Junk food, sugary drinks, fried food, processed food, etc., are all high in taste and low in nutritional value. While it is impossible to instantly stop kids from having any of these food items, limiting the consumption to healthy levels is definitely possible.

Thus, as parents, you need to make sure that if you really want your kids to remain healthy and in the best shape of their life, always fill their daily diets with plenty of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, pulses, and other healthy food items. If your children have been drinking a lot of sugary drinks, replace them with 100% cold-pressed fruit juices, smoothies, coconut water, fruit-infused water, milk, or other delicious yet healthy drink options.

When you change your kid’s diet, you will notice a gradual improvement in their weight, energy levels, and overall health over a period. In addition to changing the diet, we would also like to recommend the parents to encourage the kids to adopt a more active lifestyle. For example, you can make it a part of your kid’s routine to take a morning and evening walk for 30 minutes each. You can also enroll them in a sports training of their choice or get them to cycle for at least 30 minutes daily. Increasing their playground time and taking them outside to complete daily errands is another excellent option. If you start implementing all these corrective measures, your kids won’t have to bear the side effects associated with obesity. In fact, we at Gurukul The School, one of the top 10 CBSE schools in Ghaziabad, also believe that being consistent in efforts and modeling positive behavior can also have a great impact.

Conclusion

A clear and visible link exists between children’s diet and obesity. Eating unhealthy meals high in saturated fat, sugar, sodium, and carbohydrate will eventually contribute to obesity in children, and the little ones may face extreme health challenges as they grow. If you want to actively help your kids become healthy and fit, start implementing the tips discussed in this article from today!