Answer Questions (Group post)

Our topic: Childhood Obesity 

1. What are the critical attributes of your current event? (remember from previous assignment (1. Read topic 4 pages  31-32/ pg 34-43 enculturation/ critical attributes/ etc)

Some critical attributes to childhood obesity are the food choices that are put in schools. The school lunches are not healthy and they have poor food selections as is. Another attribute would be the lack of exercise that students get. Schools are looking to make gym class an unnecessary class for student's education. Gym is where students get out their energy and burn off calories, so without gym, students would get no physical activity. One more attribute would be the lack of nutrition. Given the choice between a burger and a salad, the children will most likely choose the burger. They are too young to know how bad some of the things they choose to eat really are, and parents are just letting their children eat whatever they can put in their mouth.



2. How would you break the problem/ current event up into informational knowledge and procedural knowledge?   
Our topic is "Childhood Obesity." Because we may explore this topic through "what is Childhood Obesity", "why it happens and becomes hotter and hotter in current society" and "how to deal with Childhood Obesity," the informational knowledge is "what is Childhood Obesity" and the procedural knowledge is "why" and "how."

 
3. How would you break this concept up to teach us as we read the blog, IN YOUR OWN WORDS, what the concepts within the current event/ issue mean?

1. Use concept map;

2. Definition of Childhood Obesity: 

(1) Childhood obesity is a condition where excess body fat negatively affects a child's health or wellbeing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childhood_obesity).

(2) Obesity is generally defined as an excess of body fat. However, there is no clear delineation between how much fat is normal and how much fat is abnormal. Furthermore, body fat is difficult and expensive to measure directly in large samples. Therefore, obesity is often defined as excess weight after adjusting for height. Body mass index (BMI, calculated as weight in kg/height in m2) is used in adults to ascertain obesity status, and a BMI 30 is considered obese. However, because children are growing, the age and gender of the child must be taken into account in order to evaluate a child’s obesity status (Spruijt-Metz, Donna, 2). 

 3. The current situation: Childhood and Adolescent Obesity: A Global Crises (Spruijt-Metz, Donna,3) AND in the last three decades, obesity rates have tripled in youth aged 6–12 (qtd in Spruijt-Metz, Donna, 2)

4. Culture of eating: Americans do not pay as much attention as Chinese to the foods, which I can find through the "zero" restaurant or cafeteria in some streets. And Americans' eating culture is also called fast-food culture. This culture influences digestion, the choices of ingredient as well as nutrition (I read some articles and watched programs about this topic, so I write these reasons. But I didn't search this information online, I will check this later). 

5. Climate: influences children (people)'s choices of foods.

6. the current policies: Here is part of the policies I found online: http://www.ncsl.org/issues-research/health/childhood-obesity-2011.aspx.

7. What else people can do: parents' involvement with schools; the cooperation with the companies, which produce foods or drinks, to restrict people getting fatter.

Work Cited

Spruijt-Metz, Donna. "Etiology, Treatment, And Prevention Of Obesity In Childhood And Adolescence: A Decade In Review." Journal Of Research On Adolescence (Blackwell Publishing Limited) 21.1 (2011): 129-152. Education Research Complete. Web. 18 Mar. 2013.