Beyond its impact on life expectancy, obesity and being overweight correlate to innumerable serious diseases and have overwhelming effects detrimental to quality of life.
Brands (nyse: YUM - news - people ), PepsiCo (nyse: PEP - news - people ) and Kraft Foods (nyse: KFT - news - people ), makers of high-calorie foods, who some have blamed for the "epidemic" of obesity and the overweight in America.
Regularly eating an extra 300 calories a day would add up to about 30 pounds of weight gain over the course of a year, increasing the risk of heart disease, diabetes, and other chronic illnesses associated with overweight and obesity, she says.
China and India are now battling epidemics of diabetes and obesity, and 1.4 billion globally are considered overweight. 90 percent of water used in developing nations goes to agriculture, and yet a full third of what is grown is wasted.
But overall, diabetes, driven so intensely by overweight and obesity, "is a terribly difficult problem, " Dr. Weir says.
Among women, eighty-one percent say that overweight and obesity are serious health problems, and only sixty-nine percent of men agreed.
The WHO says that 65% of the world's population lives in countries where overweight and obesity kills more people than underweight.
New studies appearing in major medical journals, for example, showed that the rate of overweight and obesity was continuing its climb, edging from 60 to 65 percent of the population.
Obesity and the state of being overweight substantially raises their risk of morbidity from hypertension, dyslipidemia, type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, stroke, gallbladder disease, osteoarthritis, sleep apnea and respiratory problems, and endometrial, breast, prostate, and colon cancers.
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In men, 6.1% (9, 600) of cancer cases were linked to a lack of fruit and vegetables, 4.9% (7, 800) to occupation, 4.6% (7, 300) to alcohol, 4.1% (6, 500) to overweight and obesity and 3.5% (5, 500) to excessive sun exposure and sunbeds.
In women, 6.9% (10, 800) were linked to overweight and obesity, 3.7% (5, 800) to infections such as HPV (which causes most cases of cervical cancer), 3.6% (5, 600) to excessive sun exposure and sunbeds, 3.4% (5, 300) to lack of fruit and vegetables and 3.3% (5, 100) to alcohol.
Body Mass Index (BMI) is defined as the ratio of weight (in kg) to height (in meters) squared and is an inexact measure of body fat, though it supposedly establishes cutoff points of normal weight, overweight, and obesity.
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Yet, 60% of us are overweight and half of that number is clinical obesity.
This is one of the toughest areas of drug development, amid lingering safety concerns and worries that obesity drugs could be overused among people mildly overweight.
Onge's study may be a step toward answering that "chicken-or-the-egg question" because it included only people of normal weight and therefore eliminated the influence of existing overweight or obesity, says Gina Lundberg, M.
In the U.S., the obesity rate is 30.5% and about 65% are considered overweight, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.
"Compared with the nutrition survey results of 1992, the prevalence of being overweight has increased 39% and the prevalence of obesity increased 97%, " the vice minister said, as quoted in newswire reports.
Thus, this analysis correlating BMI with risk of dying found that being overweight actually appeared beneficial and that the ill effects of obesity were limited to the very obese.
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For instance, despite abundant scientific evidence to the contrary, bias fuels our persistent, flawed belief that obesity derives from an imbalance of "calories in, calories out, " and that overweight Americans are not able to figure this out.
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Over the past three decades, childhood obesity rates in America have tripled, and today, nearly one in three children in America are overweight or obese.
Studies show that obese and overweight parents have a strong influence on their children, generating a second-hand obesity and all of its health problems.
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