Beat battle of the bulge

BACK in the day, many people had a simple explanation for being overweight or bordering on obesity. “I have fat bones” or “my family has a fat gene”, were the usual explanations and they were accepted.

To drive the point home, the fat person would “demonstrate” just how fat their bones were by thrusting their big wrists forward for all to see.

Overeating, binging on junk food and lack of exercise were never blamed.

The sad thing is that those people would in many instances go on to have fat children and the cycle would be perpetuated. The children would then go on to blame their fatness on the “fat gene”.

Yesterday, was World Obesity Day and according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), worldwide obesity has more than doubled since 1980.

The situation is getting out of control. The WHO statistics state that in 2014 more than 1.9 billion adults were overweight.

Of those, at least 600 million were obese. In the same year, 41 million children under five were overweight or obese.

It’s one thing seeing obese adults, but a different thing altogether seeing obese children. One can only imagine what they go through daily. Many people will probably disagree, but when children are overweight the only people to blame are the parents.

A parent’s responsibility is not only to ensure that a child has a roof over their head or clothes on their back. Parents also need to teach their children good eating habits, which theywill also pass on to their children.

It’s simple. If you suspect that your child spends all his/her pocket money on sugary drinks and junk food at the school tuckshop, it’s time to stop giving the child tuck money and prepare healthy lunches to eat at school.

Obesity is something that is mostly self-inflicted, but preventable.

In many instances it starts in childhood and when a child has not learnt to eat correctly, unless some intervention is put in place, this child will grow into an adult that perpetuates those bad habits.

To stop the increase of illnesses such as hypertension, diabetes, heart disease and stroke, let’s start looking closely at what we put into our mouths and the quantity thereof.

Let’s start right now.