ABSTRACT
We are now facing a new international problem: a growing number of children and adolescents who are overweight. The percentage of overweight children in the United States, ages 6 to 11 years old, has more than tripled in the last 30 years (National Center for Health Statistics, 2002). A dramatic increase in the incidence of obesity has been seen in both sexes and in children of all ages, with Mexican-American, African-American, and Native-American children disproportionately affected (Dietz, 2004). Childhood obesity is rapidly becoming a public health problem worldwide. According to the International Obesity Task Force report (2005), approximately one in ve children in Europe is overweight, with a rapidly accelerating increase in prevalence (2% annually). Crossnational epidemiological studies suggest that the prevalence of obese and overweight individuals in Russia is between 6 and 10%, while the prevalence is less than 5% for children in China, with a relationship between obesity and socioeconomic status (SES) seen across countries (Wang, 2001). We are faced with the prospect that as other nations become richer they will also become less physically active, and traditional diets will be replaced with “westernized” processed, packaged diets resulting in excess calorie consumption and eventually childhood obesity. These unsettling trends have prompted public health researchers to call childhood obesity a crisis and a pandemic (Kimm & Obarzanek, 2002).
