Question: hy did you choose to research about how parciputating in youth sport can help to keep young people healthy and reduce obesity?

Sally Fenton answered on 16 Jun 2010:

At the minute around 33% of young people aged 12-15 are overweight or obese…and being overweight or obese it linked to lots of different negative health consequences like heart disease, asthama, diabetes, high blood pressure etc. So obviously this is a problem that needs solving…as every year this percentage is increasing.

Physical actvity is one of the ways which we can help stop people becoming overweight or obese. Sport psychologists have found that there are ways which we can motivate people to take part in more physical activity and enjoy it more! And if people take part in more physical activity when they are younger then they are likely to carry this on throughout their lives and stay active when they are older.

Researchers have suggested that a way we can get young people to be more active is through playing sports like football, hockey, rubgy etc. Scientists have shown that children who play these sports are generally more active in their lives overall than those who do not. they have also shown that when we play these sport we burn up alot of calories..and this is needed for weight loss….

So…we put the 2 together to come up with our research! we are trying to find out if those children who play sport… stay fit and healthy over a long period of time as a result of this sport participation. For example…do they burn more calories in their daily lives than those children who dont play spoty? do they have less body fat? are they fitter? If this is true then it can be used to reduce the amount of children who are becoming overweight or obese so we do not end up having 50% of young people who are overweight or obese…as this is what it is predicted to be in 2050 if we do not do anything about it now!