"The weight of our nation : India" series part 12 - Obesity Prevention

“This is what people don’t understand: Obesity is a symptom of poverty. It is not a lifestyle choice where people are just eating and not exercising. It’s because kids- and this is the problem with school lunch right now – are getting sugar, fat, empty calories – lots of calories but no nutrition” Tom Colicchio.

The above has been very righty said, as truly obesity is a symptom of poverty and caused due to the consumption of empty calories hence instead of tackling childhood obesity when it is enlarged to a level where it becomes and epidemic it should be treated at its very roots by preventing before cure.

Adult obesity directly reflects on children. A prevention awareness programme wouldn't only be helpful to adults but also to children in the care of the adults. It is also important that this nutritional education is given at a very early level as early in fact at the kindergarten level. This would be the stage where the child begins to develop his lifestyle. Hence dietary modifications and involvement of physical activity would become a part of his future life. However this cannot be achieved without parental involvement.

Parents can begin an involvement by following providing healthier options. Food must never be used as a reward, the parent has to be a role model and hence the parent’s fitness is an important measure for the child to emulate.

Also a child needs to be praised for his efforts when he decides to opt for a better lifestyle letting go of the earlier one.

The WHO has developed the 2008 – 2013 action plan for the global strategy for prevention and control of non- communicable diseases to help the millions who have been coping with the same. A key fact by WHO and a highlight of my research has been when I discovered that obesity is preventable. 30 million overweight children are living in developing countries and only if these prevention strategies were to be applied this number would come down drastically.          

                                                                                             

Obesity prevention strategies are being initiated by the National Indian Health Board which is a very good initiative. The obesity prevention network (OPN) was first organized by Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Division of Physical Activity and Nutrition for the purpose of helping identify effective strategies for preventing preventing obesity.    

                                                                                                                        

Hence attention needs to be paid to preventive methods which would certainly be less stressful than the cure later. Prevention should be the primary objective with a holistic approach with dietary modification, a lifestyle change, increase in physical activity and nutritional education.