Childhood Obesity: Nature vs Nurture Nature vs nurture is one of the largest debates amongst people when examining development, partially because it can be applied to so many issues. It is an overshadowing element that is always looming in the background. How, one may ask, does it apply to childhood obesity? The answer is that it has everything to do with childhood obesity. Both aspects play a role in this ever-burgeoning problem, as will be discussed in the following paper. Nature’s Effect on Childhood Obesity There is no denying that nature plays a role in childhood obesity. According to Woolfolk and Perry “genes affect children’s activity levels, food preferences, body type, and metabolic rates, and children whose biological parents are …show more content…
Changes in the nutritional and activity environments of children and families over the past several decades have likely had the greatest impact on the present epidemic (2011).” Thus, it is not uncommon, and is in fact more likely, for obesity to be caused by a combination of nature and nature, as opposed to one or the other. According to Levin “epidemiological studies suggest that maternal undernutrition, obesity and diabetes during gestation and lactation can all produce obesity in human offspring (2009).” Thus, it is not only the way an individual was nurtured, but how his or her parents, especially the mother, treat their own bodies, not to mention circumstances such as poverty. The concepts of nature and nurture rarely exist without one another, especially in issues such as childhood obesity. The two generally combine to form a single complicated scenario. However, this is a good thing, because it means that if one is too complicated to focus on, or focusing on it is not an option in a specific child’s case, adults can simply focus on another part of the issue