(A) Why You Should Read This Book Attention Parents: If your child is obese, then you MUST read this. You cannot afford to be unaware of the serious health risks associated with childhood obesity. As a loving, caring parent, you only want the best for your child – but you may not know how serious those extra pounds are. Did you know that your child could face serious health risks, such as: Elevated Cholesterol, Breathing Problems Overexerted Heart Muscle, Causing a Higher Risk of Heart Disease or Heart Attack, Diabetes, Sleep Apnea (Stopping Breathing While Asleep),Weaker Bones and Muscle Problems It’s imperative that you help your child maintain an appropriate weight for his or her height and age. Help Your Child Lose Extra Pounds and Maintain a Healthy, Appropriate Weight – Without Any Suffering at All! Unfortunately, parents are victims. We live in an age of McDonald’s, video games, convenience and technology. It’s harder than ever to make sure our children are a healthy and appropriate weight. Our children are not going to save themselves – it’s up to us to ensure that they are healthy and happy. It’s not just our responsibility...it’s our duty. Take a look at the shocking statistics below: Even one popular cookie commercial utilizes the power of ‘family,’ showing children and their parents racing to eat the cookies – making it seem like a regular, normal activity you might engage in if you’re a ‘good’ parent. With all of these different signals coming at you, it can be extremely difficult to determine whether you’re making the right decisions regarding your child’s diet. That’s why I’m excited to tell you about... “Understanding Childhood Obesity and the Essential Role of Parents” This is a book designed to help you take control of your child’s diet and ensure that he or she is getting precisely what they need and no more – and that you’re supporting a healthy, appropriate weight. It takes the guesswork out of the equation and answers the nagging questions you have about your child’s nutrition. Just some of the information you’ll find in this book includes: (1) What daily foods your child should be eating. These are the foods that are essential for good growth and development in your child. (2) Which foods they should be eating sparingly – the kinds of foods that could end up as problematic and cause more weight to be gained. (3) How to introduce your child to healthier foods that they may be averse to in the beginning – and how to sneak in healthy foods. (4) How much exercise your child should be getting each day – and what qualifies as exercise. Did you know that something as simple as jumping rope can be an excellent exercise for your child? (5) What questions and topics you should bring up with your doctor. Should your child be taking medications or vitamin supplements? How much overweight is your child and how much weight should they lose? How quickly should they lose this weight? These are all valid questions that you should ask your child’s pediatrician. Find out which other ones you should be asking. It’s Never Too Late to Put Your Child on the Fast Track to Great Physical and Mental Health! Don’t let your child become a victim of one of the most preventable diseases in the United States of America. Utilize the proper nutrition and diet tools that this book will provide you with to ensure that your child is healthy and happy. Prevent your child from developing lifelong habits that encourage obesity, diabetes, heart disease and other health complications. If you’ve researched at all, you’ve most likely seen other books offering childhood obesity resources. It can be difficult to know which one you should trust. I can assure you that my only goal is to help you maintain your child’s health. Together – we can beat the global epidemic of childhood obesity. The statistics don’t have to keep getting worse and worse. We can see definite improvement if we

Decades of research have demonstrated that the parent-child dyad and the environment of the familyâ€"which includes all primary caregiversâ€"are at the foundation of children's well- being and healthy development. From birth, children are learning and rely on parents and the other caregivers in their lives to protect and care for them. The impact of parents may never be greater than during the earliest years of life, when a child's brain is rapidly developing and when nearly all of her or his experiences are created and shaped by parents and the family environment. Parents help children build and refine their knowledge and skills, charting a trajectory for their health and well-being during childhood and beyond. The experience of parenting also impacts parents themselves. For instance, parenting can enrich and give focus to parents' lives; generate stress or calm; and create any number of emotions, including feelings of happiness, sadness, fulfillment, and anger. Parenting of young children today takes place in the context of significant ongoing developments. These include: a rapidly growing body of science on early childhood, increases in funding for programs and services for families, changing demographics of the U.S. population, and greater diversity of family structure. Additionally, parenting is increasingly being shaped by technology and increased access to information about parenting. Parenting Matters identifies parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices associated with positive developmental outcomes in children ages 0-8; universal/preventive and targeted strategies used in a variety of settings that have been effective with parents of young children and that support the identified knowledge, attitudes, and practices; and barriers to and facilitators for parents' use of practices that lead to healthy child outcomes as well as their participation in effective programs and services. This report makes recommendations directed at an array of stakeholders, for promoting the wide-scale adoption of effective programs and services for parents and on areas that warrant further research to inform policy and practice. It is meant to serve as a roadmap for the future of parenting policy, research, and practice in the United States.

A clear explanation of causes, diagnosis, and treatment of childhood obesity

Creating an environment in which children in the United States grow up healthy should be a high priority for the nation. Yet the prevailing pattern of food and beverage marketing to children in America represents, at best, a missed opportunity, and at worst, a direct threat to the health prospects of the next generation. Children's dietary and related health patterns are shaped by the interplay of many factorsâ€"their biologic affinities, their culture and values, their economic status, their physical and social environments, and their commercial media environmentsâ€"all of which, apart from their genetic predispositions, have undergone significant transformations during the past three decades. Among these environments, none have more rapidly assumed central socializing roles among children and youth than the media. With the growth in the variety and the penetration of the media have come a parallel growth with their use for marketing, including the marketing of food and beverage products. What impact has food and beverage marketing had on the dietary patterns and health status of American children? The answer to this question has the potential to shape a generation and is the focus of Food Marketing to Children and Youth. This book will be of interest to parents, federal and state government agencies, educators and schools, health care professionals, industry companies, industry trade groups, media, and those involved in community and consumer advocacy.

Understanding the relationship between energy balance and obesity is essential to develop effective prevention programs and policies. The International Agency for Research on Cancer convened a Working Group of world-leading experts in December 2015 to review the evidence regarding energy balance and obesity, with a focus on low- and middle-income countries, and to consider the following scientific questions: (i) Are the drivers of the obesity epidemic related only to energy excess and/or do specific foods or nutrients play a major role in this epidemic? (ii) What are the factors that modulate these associations? (iii) Which types of data and/or studies will further improve our understanding? This book provides summaries of the evidence from the literature as well as the Working Group's conclusions and recommendations to tackle the global epidemic of obesity.

Research-based evidence informs this guide to understanding—and combating—childhood obesity. Addressing medical, emotional, and psychological factors, the sensible and tested guidelines help parents create balanced meals, encourage physical activity, and partner with pediatricians, family, schools, and child-care providers in their fight against obesity. A section on setbacks and detours addresses such challenges as sneaking food, snacking and grazing, and eating during the holidays. Self-assessment questionnaires, worksheets, and parent tips discuss age-specific obesity issues ranging from the prenatal period to age 21.

Almost fourteen percent of American children over age six and twelve percent of adolescents are obese, more than double the rate of thirty years ago. Although there are countless diet and weight loss books on the market, few of them explain in jargon-free terms the basic factors, the body processes that can lead to childhood obesity, and the research currently underway to combat this growing health risk. In Understanding Childhood Obesity, Dr. J. Clinton Smith has created a comprehensive guide covering nearly every field of obesity research. He explores causes and methods of control, the body's physical and chemical make-up, prevention strategies, new treatments and behavior modifications, and future research possibilities. Smith closely examines the genetic and environmental factors that can lead to childhood obesity. For parents, he answers the all-important question of whether an obese child needs help, and he outlines traditional diet and exercise treatments as well as aggressive medical and surgical techniques. He also introduces readers to the “continuous care and problem-solving model” that has proved valuable in pediatric treatment clinics. Featured are: An explanation of how obesity is identified by using a child's height and weight. A frank discussion of the health consequences of obesity. A review of how the body breaks down food for energy and how and why the body stores energy. An examination of the powerful environmental factors affecting childhood weight gain. A thorough gathering of the treatments and research, and a view of exciting new discoveries in genetics and body chemistry.