The Obesity EpidemicMaria Mena is a second-year college student at Merced Community College receiving a general education. After finishing her general studies, she plans to specialize in nursing. She is interested in nursing because she wants to help the sick and injured in a hospital or clinic setting. Nurses will help care for you whether they know you or not and are there for you in times of great need. Maria Mena is very determined and driven to push herself to achieve her goals. They include but are not limited to undergraduate and graduate degrees in nursing. Then maybe even going beyond regular nursing and specializing in pediatric nursing at some point along the way. In this article I plan to focus on a public health epidemic that is taking over the United States. It affects everyone, but those who suffer the most are children. From the age of a child to adolescence. Children are affected by obesity due to the poor choices made by their parents when they are young. Then later by the choices they make themselves. Due to these poor food choices, overeating and lack of exercise, these children will become obese at a young age. They will end up having different types of diseases later in life. Because what you first learn about making good, bad, right, or wrong choices is taught to you by your parents. Tiffany Rush-Wilson states in her article The Crisis of Childhood Obesity that because of this health crisis, we know we have a generation of children who are expected to live shorter lives than their parents. Obesity is defined as a condition in which a person's weight is more than 20% higher than recommended for his or her height and age. Durin...... middle of paper......body and mind healthy and functioning. Change is the most difficult obstacle to overcome. However, if we include small steps of change over a larger period of time, society will see that obesity can be overcome with diet, physical activity and mental awareness of the problem around us. Works Cited Gottesman, Nancy. "Generation X." School Years for Parents 266 (2012): 82-86 MasterFILE Premier. Network. September 30, 2013Gottesman, Nancy. "Should I put my child on a diet?" Parenting Early Years 27.3 (2013): 74-77 MasterFILE Premier. Network. October 2, 2013 Rush-Wilson, Tiffany C. “The Childhood Obesity Crisis: What You Can Do.” Pediatrics for Parents 24.1 (2008): 3-5 MasterFILE Premier. Network. September 23, 2013 Schwager, Tina. "Defeating childhood OBESITY". American Fitness 28.6 (2010): 18-20 MasterFILE Premier. Network. 25 September 2013 Rating: The obesity epidemic