6 . The rate of childhood obesity in the U.S. has tripled over the past 50 years. But what this trend means for children’s long-term health, and what to do about it (if anything), is not so clear.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) made waves this year by recommending that doctors put obese kids as young as two years old on intensive, family-oriented lifestyle and behavior plans.     1     This advice marks a shift from the organization’s previous stance of “watch and wait,” and it reflects the AAP’s belief that obesity is a disease and the group’s adoption of a more proactive position on childhood obesity.

Yet the lifestyle programs the AAP recommends are expensive, inaccessible to most children and hard to maintain — and the guidelines acknowledge these barriers. Few weight-loss drugs have been approved for older children, although many are used off-label.     2     And surgery, while becoming more common, has inherent risks and few long-term safety data — it could, for instance, cause nutritional deficits in growing children. Furthermore, it’s not clear whether interventions in youngsters help to improve health or merely add to the stigma overweight kids face from a fat-phobic society. This stigma can lead to mental health problems and eating disorders.

Rather than fixating on numbers on a scale, the U.S. and countries with similar trends should focus on an underlying truth: we need to invest in more and safer places for children to play where they can move and run around, climb and jump, ride and skate.

    3    In 2020 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found, unsurprisingly, that kids’ sports participation increases with their parents’ incomes: about 70 percent of kids whose families earn more than $105,000 a year participate in sports, but only 51 percent of middle-class kids and 31 percent of children at or below the poverty line do. This disparity hurts people of color the most. More than 60 percent of white children, for instance, participate in athletics, but only 42 percent of Black children and 47 percent of Hispanic children do. Experts blame these problems on the privatization of sports — as public investment in school-based athletics dwindles, expensive private leagues have grown, leaving many kids out.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, children between ages six and 17 should get at least an hour of moderate to intense physical activity every day. Yet only 21 to 28 percent of U.S. kids meet this target, two government-sponsored surveys found. The nonprofit Active Healthy Kids Global Alliance evaluates physical activity in American children, and in 2022 the group gave the U.S. a grade of D–.

Why is it so hard to get kids moving? In addition to fewer opportunities at school, researchers cite increased screen time, changing norms around letting kids play outdoors unsupervised, and a lack of safe places for them to play outside the home.

New York City, for example, had 2,067 public playgrounds as of 2019 — a “meager” amount for its large population, according to a report from the city comptroller — and inspectors found hazardous equipment at one quarter of them. In Los Angeles in 2015, only 33 percent of youths lived within walking distance of a park, according to the L.A. Neighborhood Land Trust. Lower-income neighborhoods tend to have the fewest public play spaces, despite often having a high population density.     4    

Kids everywhere need more places to play: trails, skate parks and climbing walls, gardens and ball fields, bike paths and basketball courts. Vigorous public funding to build and keep up these areas is crucial, but other options such as shared-use agreements can make unused spaces available to the public.

Rongjiang county, tucked away in the rainy hills of south-west China, has little going for it at first glance. The grey tiles covering houses in the county sea give it a rather drab feel. Locals often have to find work elsewhere, travelling to distant factories and construction sites.

Yet this summer it was Chinese from far-off cities who flocked to Rongjiang. They came to watch an amateur football league involving 20 of the county’s villages. It started in May and quickly became a       1    . Weekend matches between teams made up of butchers and farmers drew crowds of nearly 50, 000, straining the local stadium. Millions more watched on Weibo, a Twitter-like platform, and Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.

There are many reasons behind the popularity of the Rongjiang league, which is men only. Start with the     2     of professional football. Despite decades of investment, the country’s players are not very good. The men’s national team, made up of players from China’s top league, ranks 78th in the world (the women rank 14th). It has only qualified for the World Cup once, in 2002, when it failed to score a single goal.

The Rongjiang league, by contrast, has an authentic, even wholesome feel. Football in the county dates back to the 1940s, when it was     3     by university students who were fleeing China’s cities during the invasion by Japan. Today the games are free to watch and feel enjoyably low pressure. Players     4     off their missed shots with smiles. After a penalty shoot-out in the semi-finals, fans swarmed the pitch waving China’s national flag. The winners of this year’s tournament, from a village in Chejiang township, walked away with a cow. The two runners-up won three pigs and three goats, respectively.

The league’s cultural diversity is another     5    . The players come from several minority ethnic groups, of which the biggest are the Dong and the Miao. During breaks in the matches, villagers in traditional silver headdresses often dance for the crowd.

To the delight of officials at all levels, the league appears to have stimulated the local economy. During the Dragon Boat festival in June tourism spending     6     up, much of it coming from football fans. Vendors at the hundreds of stalls set up by the local government outside the stadium     7     a brisk trade. A man hawking barbecue skewers says he has doubled his income.

But there are concerns that the success of Rongjiang may be fleeting. Attracting crowds to this part of China is not easy. The city of Zibo, in the northern province of Shandong, provides a     8     tale. It became a social-media phenomenon when word of its delicious kebabs began making the rounds earlier this year. Tourists flocked to the city, where officials turned arenas into makeshift dining halls. But after a few months of this barbecue craze, interest in Zibo slumped.

Still, officials think they have found a winning strategy for the countryside. A new football league began this month and will     9     until October. It involves nearly 300 amateur teams from all around China. Each is named after a food. On August 13th a team called the Sour Soups from the nearby city of Kaili beat the Bamboo Shoots from the southern province of Guangdong. The stadium in Rongjiang was still     10    .

Building up your muscles is an easy part—the hard part is burning those layers of fat that cover your muscles. Here are some tips.

In order to work out harder, make a favorite fitness playlist with music that gets you excited, as it can help you go up to 20% longer and burn more calories, according to a study of Brunel University London. The study’s researcher says that music tends to prevent tiredness, and produces feelings of excitement.

Not only does eating good breakfast speed up your metabolism(新陈代谢), but it also nourishes (为……提供营养) your muscles. After eating breakfast, your best way of keeping fat burning going is to “graze”. Set up an eating schedule where you eat five to eight small meals every few hours throughout the day. It provides your body with a constant flow of nourishment to feed your muscles.

Men’s Health suggests choosing hard exercise that involves total body movements in order to help raise your heart rate and leave you out of breath. By including total body movements into your exercise, you’re going to end up burning a lot more calories while challenging yourself at the same time. As the saying goes: No pain, no gain. So, get moving.

Sounds easy enough, right? It’s as simple as drinking a cup of green tea every day. Adding in green tea will push fat burning to another level. And studies have shown that it can increase fat burning and help you lose weight.

While doing your weight training, try something including short, big bursts of cardio(心脏强化锻炼) throughout your exercise. For example, if you’re doing an hour-long exercise, place cardio into it every 15 minutes to help speed up your metabolism.

Ronaldo Luiz Nazario de Lima was born on 22 September 1976 in a poor suburb of Rio de Janeiro. Like most of his childhood friends, Ronaldo began his football (soccer) career playing barefoot in the streets of his neighbourhood. At the age of 14, he joined Sao Cristovao football club and only two years later became the star of Cruzeiro Esporte Clube in Belo Horizonte     1     a total of 58 goals in 60 matches and earning himself a reputation for his explosive pace and     2     finishing skills. His goal — scoring record and unusual quickness led him to be     3     in the Brazilian World Cup winning team the following year. After the World Cup, many top European football clubs were trying to     4     him. Many people, including Brazilian football legend Pele, considered him as the most     5     footballer of his generation.

Since his     6     to Dutch team PSV Eindhoven, Ronaldo’s biography has been one success after another. Two Copa America’s, a UEFA Super Cup, a Dutch Cup, a Spanish Super Cup, and two Player of the Year awards from FIFA, all in the space of two years, are some of Ronaldo’s impressive     7    . On arrival to Inter Milan in 1997, Ronaldo became the idol of the local fans who refer to him as “il Fenomeno (奇才)”.

Since the 1998 World Cup he has suffered serious knee injuries that have severely limited his     8    . Just when people began to wonder whether Ronaldo would be able to continue with his football career, he     9     to the world that he still could play. In the World Cup held in Korea and Japan, the magical striker won the Golden Shoe award and tied Pele’s Brazilian record for career World Cup goals with 12. He helped Brazil     10     its fifth World Cup championship on 30 June with a 2-0 win over Germany. It was the third time that Ronaldo had ever played in the World Cup.

China is challenging South Korea’s e-sports dominance

Some 4,000 fans gathered at the BEXCO Centre in Busan, a big port city in South Korea, on May 29th. Another 2.2m tuned in online. They were there for the finals of the Mid-Season Invitational, a prestigious(有声望的) e-sports tournament. A dozen teams had been competing over the     1     of three weeks to show off their skills at League of Legends (LOL), an online strategy-fantasy game. Now just two remained: Royal Never Give Up from China and T1,     2     the home side. As the battle raged, T1 soon sputtered(被打花了). The mood in the hall grew sad. Some fans left early. By the time the Chinese team, joining     3     at home, emerged victorious, few were left.

The enthusiasm, and bitter disappointment, reflect the place e-sports have in South Korean youth culture. The games are not just fun, but a source of national     4    . Since the 1990s players have honed(磨练) their skills in PC bangs (internet cafés), where children would go straight after school. Games such as StarCraft and LOL filled time and fired up competitive spirit like after-class basketball in America or football in Brazil. The pool of talent expanded, and South Korean players came to     5     online-gaming championships.

No longer. China is now on the rise. Chinese companies are at the heart of gaming globally. The country’s biggest tech firm, Tencent, owns Riot Games, which developed LOL, as well as 40% of Epic Games, which makes Fortnite. Interest in the pastime has grown, too. There are some 685m gamers in China, including those who play on their phones, compared with 33m in South Korea. Over the past few years China has     6     beaten South Korea in big championships.

South Korea contributed to its own downfall. “Skilled Korean players and coaches played a role in cultivating the e-sport scene in China,” says Choi Eun-Kyoung of Hanshin University, near Seoul. South Korean masters,     7     in by big money, taught Chinese players the lessons of their success and established real-world gaming academies and systems to     8     and hire talent.

South Korea has now     9     a chance to catch up. Last year, China limited under-18s to three hours of online gaming a week. Given that serious players start as young as 14 and practise some 70 hours a week, Chinese e-sports are likely to suffer. South Korea, meanwhile, last year canceled a decade-old law     10     under-16s from playing online games in the dead of night.