Thursday, November 15, 2007

Government Starts Plan To Combat Obesity At Schools

Heart disease prevention is possible if one can adopt heart-healthy lifestyle that combines balanced and healthy diet with regular exercises. And more importantly, one should start this lifestyle when young.

Unfortunately, the majority of the youngsters nowadays are living away and away from the heathy lifestyle that they are supposed to have. Long hours of TV and computer games cause young kids to skip almost all of their physical exercises. Instead of having more fresh vegetables and fish, they choose to have french fries and fast foods like burgers. As such, overweight or obese school children can be spotted easily almost everywhere.

In order to combat the increasing threat of obesity, the British government launched on October 15, 2007 a new programme costing 100 million pounds to encourage greater participation in sports at schools. The campaign aims to increase the number of hours of physical education in schools from 2 to 5 per week.

A government-commissioned research has earlier warned that half of all Britons will be obese in 25 years if nothing is do to change the current trends. Moreover, the report also revealed that 86 percent of men will be overweight in 15 years and 70 percent of women in 20 years.

As a matter of fact, about 2.3 million pounds has already been set aside in the last decade to increase the number of hours of sport in school. Nevertheless, establishing sports facilities alone would not effectively stop the situation from becoming worse. There is no doubt that schools should show leadership but because school kids spend more time at home with their parents, what they do at home matters most. Moreover, it is also agreed that there is more to do for girls so as to encourage them to keep playing sport.

It is evident that parents at home should play their parts by setting role examples for their children, in terms of their living habits. Without their support, it is felt that the effort to stop the epidemic in obesity would greatly be compromised even with the bigger budgets from governments to help kids at schools.

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