Abstract
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INTRODUCTION
Obesity is an epidemic, says the World Health Organization. The prevalence
of adult obesity has exceeded 30% in the United States, is over 20% in
most of Europe (5-23% in men, 7-36% in women), and is 40-70% in the Gulf
states and Polynesian islands. Obesity is also present in low income countries,
and low socioeconomic groups are affected most. In most countries the
prevalence of obesity now exceeds 15%, the figure used by WHO to define
the critical threshold for intervention in nutritional epidemics.
Obese people are at high risk of multiple health problems and need full
medical management. The numbers are so great (and rising), however, that
individual medical care becomes impractical and prohibitively expensive.
Currently, the cost of obesity to a country’s health service is estimated
at up to 9%, and the overall social cost of the condition is seen as a
major hindrance to economic development. An even larger proportion of
the population is overweight, with increased morbidity. Virtually all
the costs (personal, health, and economic) of obesity are met in adulthood
and result from fat that has accumulated in adulthood, but there is a
likely additional cost due to inactivity and overweight in childhood that
should also be considered.
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