Essay #87 "Childhood Obesity" 14.04.18 Obesity has become one of the most common health problems among children. The worst part of this is that it continues to expand. Over last decade, the number of obese children has increased by 20%. I will try to present some of the reasons and consequences of this below. Firstly, we need to understand the reasons behind this. One of them is due to the enormous increase in the popularity of fast-food and wide spread fast-food chains and their locations. This has severely damaged the health of the entire generation, causing them to develop absolute terrible eating habits because they are not mature enough to make right decisions. Another thing that also contribute to this is a sedentary lifestyle. Nowadays, children do not play outdoors, but spend most of their free time in front of the screen either of the TV or a computer. So, it heavily multiplies the consequences of a bad diet, making this problem even worse. The obvious consequences from this are the health problems children get from a very young age. Health conditions that were previously related to middle age, now children reach by the end of their school years. Also, in some countries, people with obesity have trouble with getting a medical insurance. Moreover, children with extra weight experience much more peer abuse than others. Children can be quite mean and in many cases this abuse ends up lowering their self-esteem and confidence. These all affect the future life of children in a very negative way. To conclude, the modern lifestyle has established some negative habits that are easily picked up by children. Sedentary life and fast-food has created a huge problem of obesity among children which can drastically affect them in life. Thus, we should not underestimate these issues and take certain measures to decrease the number of obese children, but more importantly we should to introduce a healthy lifestyle and good eating habits.