ABSTRACT
It is estimated that more than 1.1 billion adults worldwide are overweight, and 312 million of these adults are obese. Moreover, according to the International Obesity Task Force, at least 155 million children worldwide are overweight or obese as well (Haslam et al., 2005). Overweight is dened as body mass index (BMI) > 25 kg m-2,
and about one-third of overweight people are obese (BMI > 30 kg m-2; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). As the prevalence over the past decade has more than doubled, so have the health care-related costs. In the United States alone, direct and indirect costs of obesity have been estimated to exceed $100 billion annually (Weight-control Information Network, 2008). Evidence from multiple studies indicates that obesity is strongly associated with hypertension, hypercholesterolemia (Mokdad et al., 2003), diabetes, heart disease (Targher et al., 2007), and premature death (Allison et al., 1999).
