How fast-food has a significant impact in Childhood obesity Research Paper

How fast-food has a significant impact in Childhood obesity - Research Paper Example How fast-food has a significant impact in Childhood obesity? Childhood obesity is a serious/major public health concern and it currently getting a great amount of attention because of its wider economic impacts, as well as the long term consequences on children’s overall health, quality of life, academic achievements and productivity as they turn into adults. Fortunately, latest findings point out that the growth in the proportion of children categorized as obese or overweight has finally leveled off. Nevertheless, rates of obesity and overweight still remain high. â€Å"Almost 35% of children aged 6 to 19 years are overweight and roughly 19% are obese†. Taking health into consideration, the effects of obesity among children include coronary heart disease, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, orthopedic abnormalities and respiratory problems. One of the fields of the food industry, which is being held responsible for the prevalence of childhood obesity, is the FAFH – food-away-from-home – sector, in essence, the fast food industry. From the late 70’s till the mid 90’s, the volume of foods consumed away from home went up considerably from 16% to 29%. The eating patterns of children, particularly those in school, have echoed the fast growth of the FAFH industry. In the late 70’s, children obtained roughly 20% of their caloric intake from food FAFH sources. The data obesity surveys conducted from 2003 to 2006 show that food-away-from-home was liable for 35% of children’s caloric intake. A number of surveys have argued that children who take more fast-food have much lower dietary quality are also expected to be obese or overweight. This paper will discuss how fast-food has a significant impact in Childhood obesity. Background Whereas the main motivation of centering on children is the accessibility of geographically explicit information on weight measures for an extremely big sample, children are a significant group to research in their own right. â€Å"Among school aged chi ldren, 6-19 rates of overweight have soared from about 5% in the early 1970s to 16%, in 1999-2002† (Currie et al. 5). These rates are of significant concern provided that children who are obese are most expected to be obese or overweight as grownups and are gradually suffering from illnesses related to overweight when still young. Critics of the fast food sector point to a number of features, which might make fast food less healthy compared to other types of FAFH. These comprise of low time and monetary costs, high calorie levels of signature menu items and large portions. For sure, energy densities for personal food items are normally too high that it would be hard for people consuming them not to go past their normally recommended dietary intakes (Currie et al. 6). A number of consumers might be specifically defenseless. In two randomized practical trials concerning 26 overweight and 28 normal-weight children, Sinclair et al. (2833) contrasted caloric intakes on â€Å"unres tricted fast-food days,† as well as â€Å"no fast-food days.† The researchers found out that overweight children had much higher caloric intakes on â€Å"fast-food days† compared to â€Å"none fast-food days. The main fast food chains are also concerned in aggressive advertising to children. One particular experimental study of children aged three to five years provided them identical pairs of beverages and foods, the only distinction being that some foods were packaged by McDonalds (Robinson et al. 792). Data Sources and Summary Statistics Data for this paper came from three sources: school data and restaurant data. School Data The data on children from this study came from Californian schools from the late 90 and early 2000s up to 2007. The study of mostly 9th graders, which the paper centers on, represents 3.6 million student-year observations. In California, during spring, 9th graders are normally given fitness assessment test,