We can win battle of the bulge

BACK in the day, many people had a very simple explanation for being overweight or even bordering on the obese.

“I have fat bones” or “my family has a fat gene” were the usual explanations and they were accepted by all.

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

However, overeating, gorging on unhealthy food as well as 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 continue where the children would then blame their fatness on the “fat gene”.

Today is World Obesity Day and according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), worldwide obesity has more than doubled since 1980. This means that 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 the age of five were overweight or obese in 2014.

It’s one thing seeing obese adults but a different thing altogether seeing obese children and 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 the head or clothes on their back. Parents also need to teach their children good eating habits which they, in turn, will also pass on to their children.

It’s very simple. If you suspect that your child spends all his/her tuck money on sugary drinks and junk food at school, it’s time to stop giving the child tuck money and prepare healthy lunches for him/her to take to 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 well, unless some intervention is put in place, this child will grow into an adult that continues those bad habits.

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