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Being overweight or having obesity may increase the risk of several diseases, such as diabetes, heart disease, and some cancers, and may lead to short- and long-term health problems during pregnancy. [2] Rates of obesity worldwide tripled from 1975 to 2016 to involve some 1.8 billion people and 39% of the world adult population. [3]
"This suggests that people from the South come closer to telling the truth than people from other regions, perhaps because there's not the social stigma of being obese in the South as there is in other regions." [99] The area of the United States with the highest obesity rate is American Samoa (75% obese and 95% overweight). [100]
On average obese people have a greater energy expenditure than normal weight or thin people and actually have higher basal metabolic rates. [45] [46] This is because it takes more energy to maintain an increased body mass. [47] Obese people also underreport how much food they consume compared to those of normal weight. [48]
Obesity BMI. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute defines obesity as a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or more. BMI is a measurement of body fat based on a person’s height and weight. An ...
This has been attributed to the fact that people often lose weight as they become progressively more ill. [91] Similar findings have been made in other types of heart disease. People with class I obesity and heart disease do not have greater rates of further heart problems than people of normal weight who also have heart disease.
Being overweight has been identified as a risk factor for cancer, and Walter Willett predicts that being overweight will overtake smoking as the primary cause of cancer in developed countries as cases of smoking-related cancer dwindle. [16] Being overweight also increases the risk of oligospermia and azoospermia in men. [17]
Like many other medical conditions, obesity is the result of an interplay between environmental and genetic factors. [2] [3] Studies have identified variants in several genes that may contribute to weight gain and body fat distribution, although only in a few cases are genes the primary cause of obesity.
Obesity has been observed throughout human history. Many early depictions of the human form in art and sculpture appear obese. [2] However, it was not until the 20th century that obesity became common — so much so that, in 1997, the World Health Organization (WHO) formally recognized obesity as a global epidemic [3] and estimated that the worldwide prevalence of obesity has nearly tripled ...