Child Health And Responsibility
Can A Person Sue His Parents For What Was Fed Him As A Child?
Imagine twenty to thirty years down the road when the millions of children today with bad diet and lifestyle habits will have grown into adults that suffer from obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure. They’ll be swimming in medical bills and this will be caused by the establishment of poor eating habits and lack of exercise when they were young.
These obese adults burdened by mountains of bills and feeling ostracized by their healthy peers will then band into support groups and in their frustration look for someone to point an accusing finger at- their parents. Looking for a way to lighten the medical expenses, they then press lawsuits against the ones responsible for the bad diet and lifestyle habits they formed in their youth- their parents. You know what? They might even win because given the number of junk food-eating kids these days, the judge will most likely be obese and sickly too.
Such a story may be funny, but believe it or not, it might really happen. Young adults these days have been blaming Mom and Dad for their current problems and health and dietary issues might easily include this. One thing’s for sure, the US government or the American fast food industry won’t be taking the blame for it.
Believe it or not, the diet of a lot of babies and toddlers these days are as actually as bad as those of their chip n dip munching teenage counterparts who dine mainly on fast-food. The American Dietetic Association published a recent study proving this in one of the journals.
It’s sad, but most of the respondents that did report having a vegetable as part of their diet thought French fries qualified as one. A third of the children surveyed by researchers from the Tufts University School of Medicine did not even have fruit and vegetables in their daily.
Quite shocking that in the survey, carbonated beverages, found to be the main cause of obesity along with the health complications it brings, were even given to infants poured in baby bottles. Since most of these soda-suckling kids spend most of their time being couch potatoes, all that sugar obviously doesn’t get burned-off.
Not surprising then that a fourth of preschool children suffer from obesity and the numbers are increasing rapidly. Furthermore, preferences in children’s diet are established during 2nd and 3rd years of their lives, so the statistics are certain to get worse. Most cases of heart disease and diabetes are linked of course, to bad diet and unhealthy lifestyles, so children these days or on the road to bad health.
Can anything be done to curb this deadly trend? Things may look bleak but as parents, we ultimately have the power to affect the way our children eat and run their future lives by setting-up proper guidelines. Becoming fit, health-conscious role models ourselves can have dramatic effects on how they eat and go about their daily activities as they grow up.
You wouldn’t know it, but maybe a couple of decades down the road maybe babies of today will grow up as smart and healthy adults and give credit to and appreciation for their parents who’ve set-up proper guidelines and helped them form healthy habits during their early years. Wouldn’t this be far more desirable than a lawsuit?
