Luke Watson-Sharer 3/1/14 YATW Blog Post #2 Childhood Obesity: Exactly What Is It?

Hello my name is Luke Watson-Sharer. Hopefully you have read my first blog post here First Blog post. I’m writing my second blog on my discovered research. As in the other blog post,  the purpose of You and the World is to make a difference through an issue.  I picked obesity which is a very significant issue in the U.S. and many other countries.  Obesity affects our physical and mental health and therefore our future. Blog 1 discussed the many issues related to obesity in the U.S. and the world.  I decided to do my own study by conducting a survey on my topic. I did two surveys:  one for people with knowledge on the topic and one for anyone. I wanted to know what experts or people with knowledge believed and what anonymous people think about the topic.

Survey 1 This is my first survey. It’s for anyone to answer and you share your opinions and basic things you do. I start by asking the responder if they believe they’re obese, Then I asked why they believe they are or are not obese.  Next, I ask if they made attempts to lose weight.  You can read the other question on the link “Survey 1.”  The responses were interesting.  What interested me was seeing that about 90% said they didn’t believe they were obese but about 70% said they eat sweets a lot. This is interesting because if you  eat a lot  of sugary things you may gain weight.  Many said eating sweets is a bad habit.  Since most said they are not obese, metabolism may be a factor.  Genetics could play a larger role; I will discuss  this later in the blog. Also almost everyone says they don’t workout or  try to  cut calories but of 90% do not believe they are  obese.  This makes me curious. Finally, after seeing my results for survey 1 it seems that obesity could be more genetic  than a result of bad habits. Responses To survey 1

Survey 2 This is my second survey. It’s made for experts or people with knowledge. I asked for only knowledgeable people reply. (I couldn’t control who replied.)  This is so I could learn more about obesity. My first question was probably the hardest question to ask. What do you believe obesity exists? This can be hard because I got many opinionated responses and because it’s a heated topic. Then I asked other questions on what to do to help children with obesity. I ask about helping kids and ways of recommending things to kids. Survey Responses: Responses Here you’ll see many of the responses to the questions I was hoping to answer.  Finally, I got good insight from knowledgeable people on childhood obesity.

These responses added to my knowledge of f the issue  and ideas for helping overweight kids.  I got a wide amount of responses that differed a lot; this is still helpful data.  Some of my personal opinions have changed on what obesity is and how to help kids with obesity because now I’m leaning towards obesity being more genetic. This will affect the recommendations to help kids;  losing weight isn’t as easy as saying “exercise.” I still wonder about what causes obesity. I got many answers between genetic and bad eating habits and I still am baffled. While I was going my survey, a new study found children from 2 - 5 years old are not as obese as 10 years ago.  This is great but all other age groups saw no major change.   I’m thinking of doing a program for schools without gym’s so that students can also get exercise even though they don’t have a school gym. I can maybe go back to my old middle and elementary school because we never had a gym.

My research has helped me a lot. It  left a question mark but has given me more views on the topic of childhood obesity. Maybe we will never have an exact definition to childhood obesity or if it’s genetic or from bad habits.  What we do know is that it’s a big issue in the U.S.  and worldwide.   I hope to be an  agent of change. Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoy my next blog post.

Annotated Bibliography: Here