Childhood Obesity: Risk Factors and Preventive Measures

The obesity epidemic has grown worldwide in both the developed and developing countries. We are the “present” of the era with ever increasing growth of obesity; the coming generation is our “future”. Future of obesity largely depends on how we are handling it in present. Overweight and obesity prevailing in children has multiple causes from genetic factor, hormonal imbalance to environmental factors, lifestyle preferences and cultural practice. Keeping apart the hormonal, genetic and any physiological causes of obesity which are not in direct control, the remaining factors such as lifestyle, environment and cultural background which can be modulate to help eliminating percentage of existing and future obesity. Evidences have suggested that the major cause of obesity is imbalance between food habits and physical activity. Additional factors as per the recent researches show that excessive use of smart phones has increased the overweight issues and also increases the anxiety among the user. Childhood obesity has maximum chances to develop into adulthood obesity. Therefore, to eradicate the future obesity, there is need to increase the awareness of do's & don'ts to prevent obesity and also the educate common people to know about the pros & cons of obesity. This paper is inclined towards the various risk factors of childhood obesity, and also pointing some preventive and educational measure to avoid obesity in the future.