Childhood Obesity Sociology

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Poverty as a social concept is an influential factor in aspects like education as well as health and illness. Obesity is a growing health problem, which affects both the young and old. ‘More than one-third of adults and around one-fifth of teenagers are obese’ (Venator and Reeves, 2015). There has been extensive research into causes and explanations of the increase of childhood obesity. Children from low-income households with parents that are less educated about nutrition, health and lifestyle are more likely to be obese. This literature review is going to highlight the relationship between poverty and childhood obesity while assessing different factors that are of the same importance. To an extent, poverty and social mobility have a relationship …show more content…
As sociologists, we understand that there is a clear relationship between poverty and social mobility but the extent to which poverty and other factors can affect obesity is not clear.

Environmental and genetic factors affect obesity as there is a complex relationship between obesity and poverty, and defining both terms can create misperceptions. The NHS states that ‘the term obese describes a person who’s overweight, with a lot of body fat’ and that ‘obesity is generally caused by consuming more calories, particularly those in fatty and sugary foods, than you burn off through physical activity’ (2016). Childhood obesity, which refers to peoples under the age of 16 in the UK, is in an all-time high as ‘the UK has the highest rate of children obesity in Western Europe’ (Dring, 2014). When referring to poverty, there are two terms to consider. Absolute poverty which ‘occurs when people cannot obtain adequate resources (measured in terms of calories or nutrition) to …show more content…
Sociologists are interested in the role of the individual and the impact it has on the population. Individual level factors include ‘genetic predisposition, behaviour, preferences, knowledge and beliefs’ (BMA 2005). Nutrition and diet are very important to an individual health. For most children, apart from school meals, they eat food that are bad for their health. The Office for National Statistics carried out a National Diet and Nutrition Survey and ‘found that all age groups, 1.5-18, had a preference for high-fat content diets, concurrent with low consumption of fruits and vegetables’ (BMA, 2005). Obesity leads to diseases like asthma and diabetes and can develop from as early as the age of four. Children are unable to decipher between what food to consume and what food to stay away from so blaming them seems imbalanced. Children that attend secondary school get pocket money and power to purchase their own meals and most of them spend their money on fizzy drinks, chocolates and junk food. Although there are external factors to childhood obesity, some blame is on the children. On the other hand, ‘childhood and adolescence are particularly vulnerable life stages requiring protective social and public health policies’ (Cauchi et al, 2016). The lifestyle explanation for the existence of disease states that ‘freely made bad choices about diet, smoking and exercise make people
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