Healthy children, healthy adults

We all want our children to be healthy and grow to be healthy adults, however the trends are pointing to the contrary. According to Purcell, (2008) over the past 25 years the number of Canadian children who are overweight has doubled, and obesity among Canadian children has tripled. There has also been a steady increase in cardiovascular related disease and type 2 diabetes among children. Purell, further suggests that the ‘obesegenic environment’ that we live in is mostly responsible, and the government needs to take stronger regulatory action in order to protect our children from the effects obesity will have on their future.
According to Colman, (2001) Ontario spends 97.4% of its health-care budget on the treatment of illness/disease leaving only 2.6% for disease prevention and health promotion. Like smoking, obesity has been proven to be a huge contributing factor to disease and mortality, and like smoking it is preventable.We need the government to step up to the plate and stop the advertisements aimed at children (i.e. unhealthy food, and sedentary promoting products). This may make children's television less appealing (wow I think I see a chain reaction here). Remember what the government did with cigarette advertisements? They banned it.


Unfortunately our children are in for a bleak future if something isn’t done to stop these trends. Overweight and obese children tend to become overweight and obese adults. This will cause a huge strain on our health-care system as well as the economy. I for one don’t see these issues as being fault of the individual. It's not the child's fault and it's not their parents fault even though parents have the most say in what their children eat. I believe it is more of a political issue. With fast food on every corner and junk food advertisement continually bombarding us, it makes it very difficult to teach children that these foods are not so healthy. There is also the matter of expense; take bread for example, the more inexpensive bread products are those with the least nutritional value, and bread isn't the only food product that has this issue. Furthermore, some families simply can not afford to purchase the healthier foods and they rely on foods that will satisfy hunger for the least amount of dollars.



Personally, I would like to know whose crazy idea was it anyway to allow vending machines in the schools in the first place? I would like to see more funding for the schools in the way of extracurricular activities and health education; and never mind trying to figure out what to put in the vending machines to replace the unhealthy choices, just get rid of the vending machines altogether!!
I firmly believe the government needs to start spending money now on health promotion and disease prevention in order to save money on the future costs of health-care. There seems to be lots of talk over the last few years about these initiatives but, I have seen little action.