BMJ  2006;333:959-962 (4 November), doi:10.1136/bmj.333.7575.959

Practice

ABC of obesity

Strategies for preventing obesity

clinical research fellow in the Division of Developmental Medicine, Human Nutrition, University of Glasgow, USA.

director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of Colorado, USA.

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

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.

Obesity is increasingly affecting younger people, with warning signs for the future from the increasing prevalence of overweight in childhood

 

View this table:   Differences between individual and population based approaches to obesity. Adapted from Swinburn et al (see Further Reading box)

 

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 . . . [Full text of this article]

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Strategies in the management of obesity

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