Obesity Persuasive Speech

Imagine you’re walking through the playground of an elementary school during recess. You observe kids swinging, playing kickball, and jumping rope. As you continue to wander the park, you notice how a crowd of children sits around the benches and tables. You approach them and ask why they aren’t participating with the other children. They simply shrug their shoulders and answer, “We don’t want to play.” Now imagine your own childhood; when it was recess time, were you running around enjoying the activity, or were you sitting on the benches? Bring your attention back to the children sitting on the bench. Stare closely at their appearance. Do you notice that all these children are overweight? Nearly one and three children are obese or overweight.

The term obesity is often mistaken for the word, “overweight”, which is defined as having excess body weight for a particular height from fat, muscle, bone, water, or a combination of these factors. Nationally, about 12.7 million adolescents, ages 2-19 are obese. Obese adolescents have a high caloric imbalance. Caloric imbalance, which is too few calories shed for the amount of calories consumed, is a major cause of obesity in children. One specific factor that contributes to the obesity of children is education of the child’s care provider. At home, caregivers rarely watch or consider the amount of food their child is actually consuming in a day. The daily amount of calories for a child between the age of four and six is about 1,500-1,750. Children seven to nine, it’s 1,700-1,950 calories each day. The amount of calories that overweight and obese children consume each day is much more than this. A solution to this problem is providing more education about healthy lifestyles and obesity to children in elementary school. Schools today do not provide enough information about the problem, so therefore children know nothing about it. Schools should include facts about obesity and healthy living somewhere in their curriculum, so children can learn about it at a young age. By doing this, children won’t make the same mistakes as their parents did, and allow their own children to eat whatever they

An argument that could arise is that implementing nutrition into the curriculum could take away learning time from other subjects. This is not likely going to pose a threat though. The nutrition class would not be everyday; it would be monthly. By doing this, students can still benefit from a nutrition class, but it wouldn’t interfere with other academic subjects. The next dispute that could arise is that the nutrition class won’t change the eating habits of children because they aren’t the ones purchasing the food. Although this is a true statement, being educated on the effects of unhealthy eating habits, children can limit themselves to how much “junk” food they consume. Also, after learning about the effects, children can bring home this information to their parents or caregivers. This will make parents think twice about the sort of food they are allowing their children to think, and may even change what they feed their children. Another argument that may emerge is that the youth gym won’t financially survive because it would be offered free to overweight children. Like any business, this is a possibility that is capable of happening. But what people forget is that children with a normal BMI are required to pay a fee before enrolling into the gym. Also, parents of adolescents who are taking the class for free are likely to give donations