In many countries, childhood obesity is a growing problem. What are the reasons for this and what can individuals and governments do to tackle the problem?

Over the past few decades childhood obesity has become a growing concern for both parents and governments globally. To overcome an issue like childhood obesity, I believe that a combination of controlling consumption of the child, along with ensuring that they recieve the necessary hours of physical activity is vital.

The cause for the spike in childhood obesity in the last few decades can be linked back to various improvements we have achieved within society, namely the access to cheap ultra-processed foods, and the variety of home entertainment available to us in this day and age. Children nowadays prefer not to play outside, but to stay at home, mainly because of the devices available to them at home provides them more enjoyment than playing outside. With the development of TV, smartphones, video games, and social media, children are now given countless options to stay at home and have a goodtime without completing anything physical. Therefore, they do not use the energy they consume which then is converted into fat, which leads to obesity. To complement this behaviour, breakthroughs in the food industry have created adictive flavours like "Honey Mustard" and even "Cool Ranch". These flavours are added into a diverse range of snacks which children nowadays consume frequently, providing them with much more calories than they need, when this is combined with the lack of activity mentioned earlier, it creates the perfect environment for a child to develop obesity.

However, there are multiple ways to combat this problem which governments and individuals can both apply. The most obvious improvement to be made is to promote physical activity, a parent could achieve this by simply going outside with their children and playing with them, or they could simply go to the pool for a swim, maybe even send them to a camp, anything to get their bodies moving and burning the fat they have. Governments should promote physical movement through holding awarness days, competition, and building parks and playgrounds to encourage children to go outside and play. The next step is limit their screen time. Parents should be responsible by ensuring that their child does not exceed the recommended amount of screen time, which is around 2 hours for children. Governments can achieve this by banning social media for children, which has already been achieved by countries like Austrailia and the UK. Finally, governments and parents should ensure that their children eat healthy. Governments should be subsidising healthy alternatives to ultra-processed foods, and add additional taxes to unhealthy food. Parents should avoid purchasing unhealthy foods to prevent a child's temptation to eat unhealthy.

Obesity is a growing problem. But that does not mean that we do not have the means to solve this problem. As long as governments and parents ensure that children maintain a healthy lifestyle, child obesity can be overcome.