Childhood Obesity; Is It Our Diets?

Walking into the supermarket, it’s normal to see a kids’ show character endorsing an unhealthy meal to kids that are too young to understand marketing of this nature. It’s also normal in our society for school districts to serve fattening meals in an environment that is supposed to keep our kids safe. Childhood obesity is a national disease that many think can be solved with a better diet and exercise, but socioeconomic factors in a child’s environment might be preventing healthier alternatives in the first place, “The situation is predicted to worsen; rising childhood obesity rates forewarn of worsening statistics. While it is agreed that both individual factors such as genetic susceptibility and behavior are important in life-long weight gain, evidence is ill-defined with respect to the nature of the environmental influences that impact obesity” (Levine, 2011, para. 2). Some of the socioeconomic factors that cause childhood obesity include a low-quality built environment, and the individual financial situation of the family. A low-quality built environment is an example of a macrosystem that affects childhood obesity, while the financial situation of a family is a less broad microsystem, affecting childhood obesity rates just as much.

The built environment affects childhood obesity because it determines what kind of infrastructure is available to them. In order to prevent or solve childhood obesity, you need resources which are provided by the built environment. Many poor neighborhoods are not within reasonable proximity to places that sell fresh produce, but instead they have frequently occurring locations that sell exclusively nonperishable items, “lower-income communities have reduced access to supermarkets and places to exercise, but that these same communities have numerous convenience stores and fast food chains, which, taken together, promote poor nutrition and little or no physical activity” (Rogers et al., 2015, para. 10). The poor quality of the infrastructure that already exists in a low-income neighborhood is enough to cause health problems, but it’s also important to note the lack of things they have that rich neighborhoods do have.

Low-income neighborhoods often have no parks, or locations that promote physical activity. Typically, when they do have something of the sort, it’s unsafe to use freely. In a study on neighborhood socioeconomic conditions, Singh et al. (2010 para.1) found that, “The odds of a child's being obese or overweight were 20-60 percent higher among children in neighborhoods with the most unfavorable social conditions such as unsafe surroundings; poor housing; and no access to sidewalks, parks, and recreation centers than among children not facing such conditions.” There is no way for children to get exercise in these neighborhoods safely because they simply don’t have the resources to do so. Their living conditions are just not conducive to such activities.

Another socioeconomic cause for childhood obesity is the family’s financial situation. Besides living in a low quality built environment because of high affordability, there are other low quality things that low income families must come to accept. The reason that the family’s financial situation determines the risk/likelihood of childhood obesity is because they can only afford limited options in terms of education, nutritional foods, and recreational activities. A study about rising social inequalities in US childhood obesity explains that, “Obesity prevalence for children below the poverty threshold was 27.4%, 2.7 times higher than the prevalence for children with family income exceeding 400% of the poverty threshold. Nearly half of all children living in low-education, and other low-income strata were overweight” (Singh et al., 2010, para.19). People with low income often use food assistance such as food stamps like SNAP, CFSP, or CACFP. These programs are helpful to people that have difficulty affording food, but they nearly never offer anything considered a healthy option. Instead of offering assistance with produce, they are used on packaged, shelf stable products. Thus, children in low-income families only have access to things the government is willing to assist their families with.

In a child’s environment, there are macrosystems and microsystems related to low income that causes childhood obesity. An example of the effect of a macrosystem would be that when the neighborhood income is low, it causes a low-quality built environment in which it is difficult to find resources like safe places to exercise and access to fresh produce. It’s hard to solve or prevent problems in a macrosystem because if you were to make the built environment better, the cost of living would go up, and the targeted people who are most at risk would be forced to leave. However, one way to fix the macrosystem would be to organize community work outs and activities. This way, it is a public endeavor, making it safer for people because they will be in groups. An example of the effect of a microsystem would be that when the family income is low, it causes difficulty affording nutritional foods. Preventing problems in the microsystem would involve changing food stamps and government funding so that they cover healthier options such as produce.

It’s considerably more unfortunate that childhood obesity occurs in these children specifically because the routines that they have developed as children will assuredly shape what they are like as adults. Behaviors commonly related to health complications such as eating and sleeping often begin to stabilize in early childhood (Dawson-McClure et al., 2019, para. 3). In the future, maybe disadvantaged neighborhoods will be given more opportunities to live better lifestyles. Maybe low-income families will be given the opportunity to afford healthy diets. People have already taken to forming agricultural neighborhoods inside of urban areas with limited access to produce.

References

Dawson-McClure, Spring; Miller Brotman, Laurie; Theise, Rachelle; Palamar, Joseph J.; Kamboukos, Dimitra; Barajas, Gabriela; Calzada, Esther. (2019). Early childhood obesity prevention in low-income, urban communities. PubMed Central (PMC). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6534813/

Levine (2011). Poverty and obesity in the U.S. diabetes. https://diabetes.diabetesjournals.org/content/60/11/2667

Rogers; Eagle; Taylor F; Sheetz; Woodward; Leibowitz; Song; Sylvester; Corriveau; Kline-Rogers; Jiang; Jackson (2015). The relationship between childhood obesity, low socioeconomic status, and race/ethnicity: Lessons from Massachusetts. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4939441/

Singh, Gopal K; Siahpush, Mohammad; Kogan, Michael D. (2010). Neighborhood socioeconomic conditions, built environments, and childhood obesity. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20194993/

Singh, Gopal K; Siahpush, Mohammad; Kogan, Michael D. (2010). Rising social inequalities in US childhood obesity, 2003–2007. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20006275/