Medical experts have carried out studies on the causes of obesity in children and their results indicate that exposure to a cold virus causes more children to be overweight. The virus is called adenovirus 36 (AD36) and it manifests itself through frequent colds and bowel difficulties.
According to Philips (2010), children who are exposed to the viral cold are said to have high chances of adding more weight than the other children who had never suffered from this illness. Other studies indicate that animals that were injected with the same virus became obese thus the effects of this virus are similar in both humans and animals.
The above argument is inductive in nature because the generalized conclusion arises from specific experiments. Researchers considered a certain number of children and then tested for AD36 with the aim of coming up with the conclusion. This shows some truth about the argument but does not entirely support the conclusion.
While the above argument may be true AD36 is not the only cause of obesity because there are other factors that contribute to obesity such as genes and eating habits (Dhurandhar, 2007). There are children who inherit obesity genes from there parents. This means that even if these children eat very little food they will still be obese. However, there are children who are obese because they eat more food.
Most mothers assume that the best thing they can do to their child is feed him/her frequently. What most parents don’t understand is that the child is not active and hence the excess food that he or she consumes is converted into fat because it’s not needed by the body and since the baby is still inactive the excess fat in its body can not be burned. This is because they don’t use much energy (Kiess et al., 2004).
Cases of obesity have increased more than double compared to previous decades because the kind of food that is fed to the children comprises of chemicals that were initially fed to the farm animals to induce their appetite to make them mature faster. Perhaps the residues of these chemicals are not fully exhausted by the time we consume the meat and vegetables hence they continue to react within our bodies and when we are making babies we pass the same compounds to our children (Augustus et al., 2005).
Nowadays everything has changed because children are not allowed to play that much because technology has made things easier by introducing computer games which keeps children indoors (Atkinson, 2007). When a child has grown enough to be able to attend school they rarely walk because they travel by school transport even when they are covering a short distance. Additionally most parents give their children a lot of junk food instead of a balanced diet.
Therefore, parents should allow their children to be active because that’s the only way excess fat can be burnt other wise if these children don’t regulate their weight their expected lifespan will reduce because they are prone to diseases that are associated with obesity such as diabetes, high blood pressure and heart attacks.
This is because the excess body fat places itself on the walls of blood veins and thus the pressure of blood flow increases. In the previous decades such illnesses were unheard of among children but the sudden change in lifestyle has rendered most children prone to these diseases. Children should be encouraged to play more outdoor games than just watching television and playing computer games because idling does not only contribute to obesity but it also makes them to be less creative.
References
Atkinson, R.L. (2007).”Viruses as an etiology of obesity”, Mayo Clin.Proc.82 (10):1192-8.
Augustus, A.S. et al. (2005).”Human adenovirus-36 is associated with increased body weight and paradoxical reduction of serum lipids”. International Journal of Obesity. 29(3):281-6.
Dhurandhar, P.M. (2007). ”Infectobesity: Obesity of infectious origin”. Adv.Food Nutrition Research.52:61-102.
Kiess, W. et al. (2004). Obesity in Childhood and Adolescence. Switzerland: Karger Publishers.
Philips, J. (2010). “Cold Virus Strain Linked to Childhood Obesity”. The Epoch Times. Web.