GEOBIOS

Environmental changes include an overall increase in the rate of children's growth, overfeeding, increased levels of body fat and the decreasing age of puberty. High-calorie, low-nutrition food is available everywhere and it is cheap in contrast to healthy food which is less available and more expensive. High-sugar breakfast cereals and high-fat fast foods are marketed heavily to children, so they learn unhealthy eating before they even get to school. Such changes range from shortened sleep duration to physical inactivity to excess caloric intake. Type-2 diabetes in children and adolescents is an emerging problem worldwide. Unfortunately, the trend is going in the other direction, with increasingly unhealthy diets and diminishing physical exercise. Children should be taught that a healthy diet and active lifestyle help to prevent development of obesity and type-2 diabetes. Halting and eventually reversing the obesity pandemic should prevent the rise of type-2 diabetes in children. In the present study, 77.5% children like to eat outside. 41.36% go out 2 times in a month and 15.92% were going more than two times a month. In this study restaurant visit per week was positively associated with overweight. Majority of children (89.89%) are consuming carbonated soft drinks. Actions should include the promotion of increased physical activity, improved nutrition in schools and reduced levels of salt, sugar and fat in foods. Public health programmes can influence some of these environmental factors and thus might be able to arrest or slow down the increasing trend.