Synonyms
Childhood obesity and responsibilities
Introduction
Obesity is defined by the WHO as “abnormal or excessive fat accumulation that may impair health.” It is a step beyond overweight, although the two are often addressed together: In practice, overweight and obesity are often defined by reference to body mass index (BMI), which is the weight of a person in kilograms, divided by the square of their height in meters. A BMI of over 25 is considered overweight, while a BMI over 30 is obese. As a measure of obesity, however, BMI has its critics, for reasons such as the fact that it does not distinguish between lean mass and fat mass and that it may not accurately account for the relevance of height differences.
The WHO estimates that obesity has nearly doubled worldwide since 1980; in 2008, 35 % of adults were estimated to be overweight and 11 % were obese. This problem has been particularly acute in the Western world: In the United States, over one third of adults are obese, while...
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Chadwick, R., O’Connor, A. (2014). Obesity and Responsibility. In: Thompson, P.B., Kaplan, D.M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0929-4_109
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