Causes and Treatment of Childhood Obesity

'He is just a kid, give him what he wants'. This is the phase that is mostly used by the parents in order to encourage their children from eating what they want as long as it will make them happy. However, the statistic has shown that over 340 million children and adolescents aged 5-19 were overweight or obese in 2016 (WHO). There were several reasons that cause childhood obesity which are consuming high calories food, lack of exercise and consuming high sugary drinks. So, it is very important to have a healthy lifestyle so that childhood obesity can be prevented.

Nowadays, most the parents are working so they are not able to prepare a good meal for their children. Therefore, one of the alternatives is to buy fast food since it is convenient and cheaper and this causes the children to have unhealthy eating habits. Therefore, based on the video that I choose from the YouTube channel called 'Let's take on Childhood Obesity, provided a better understanding of the effect of unhealthy eating habits on the growth of children. Researchers found that people consumed more calories eating fast food than they would typically eat at home (National Taskforce on Obesity (2005). Moreover, the study shows that obesity can also occur due to a lack of exercise. Additional calories that are not used or burned up through physical activities will translate into fat. In a nutshell, this campaign is used to provide awareness for the parents about the importance of a healthy lifestyle for their children to grow in the long term.

The video with the title 'Let's take on Childhood Obesity is running by the organization name as Special Advisory Group on Obesity (SAGO) their main objective is to provide consultation with the children regarding obesity treatment guidelines. Another organization for this campaign is the Regional Obesity Prevention Implementation Group (ROPIG) with the main purpose to help reduce the side effect related to overweight and obesity in society. This campaign focuses on giving society awareness to change the everyday habits that can lead to weight gain in childhood. For example, the campaign aims at showing what the children might suffer in the future if they continue their unhealthy eating habits.

The target market for this campaign is primarily the parents of children aged between 2 and 12 years. It is clearly said that education begins at home. Therefore, as a parent, they should show a good example for their children and encourage them to make changes in their lifestyle. The other target market is adult who has influence or control over the children such as the school teacher. For example, during children's care centre or school, the teacher can encourage the children to do some physical activity such as playing in the kindergarten or running in the field. This can help them boost their metabolism and be active throughout the day suited to the slogan for the Safe food programme which is 'Be safe, be healthy, be well.

Based on the video 'Let's take on Childhood Obesity on YouTube, the message that the social marketer wants to deliver to the audience is to provide the parents with practical solutions in order to overcome unhealthy eating habits among the children and to promote a balanced diet. For example, the parents should not keep any junk food in the house and substituted them by placing the colourful fruits in the basket so that it will attract the children to eat them as a snack.

Moreover, through this video, perhaps the audience is able to make an improvement in their lifestyle, especially for the parents as they should teach their children to make healthy eating choices and inspire them to do physical activities such as walking and jogging. Other than that, parents should spend their time cooking nutritious meals for their family as it will give more advantages to their health. Therefore, this video shows that there is a significant change in parent behaviour as the number of parents open to discussing the issue of children's weight have raised up to 7%. Moreover, some of them have tried to reduce their sugar and junk food consumption by 5% and this shows how effective the video is towards the changes in consumer behaviour. 

Therefore, it can be concluded that these social marketing ads are useful to give awareness and education to society as a whole about the importance of having a healthy lifestyle.