Posts Tagged ‘Recipe for fighting obesity’
Recipe for fighting obesity
Changes in diet and daily physical activity have meant that our society suffers from excess weight, which affects the physical and mental health of many people. To address this “pathology” specialists insist the key to prevention lies in proper education from early childhood.
1. Is the world obese?
Obese. Spain is among the five countries with the highest rate of obesity and overweight in Europe. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), obesity and overweight characters has reached global epidemic. More than one billion adults are overweight and of these, at least 300 million are obese.
In Spain, data 2007 of the Spanish Society for the Study of Obesity (SEED), say 15.5 percent of adults are obese and 38 percent are overweight. Therefore, adding overweight and obesity, we can say that 54 percent of the Spanish population is overweight.
Today our country is among the five highest rates of obesity and overweight in adults in Europe, but if we sum in the child population data are alarming, especially as some bands between 11 and 17 years, where we led the list.
To understand the situation, it is interesting to know what they mean by medical societies obesity and overweight. Both terms are measured by body mass index (BMI), a result that is obtained by dividing the person’s weight by height squared.
If it is below 18.5 is considered that the individual is thin, if obtained between 18.5 and 25, are normal weight. If the result is between 25 and 30 speaks of overweight and above 30, this would be a case of obesity.