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On Obesity

OBESE adjective

grossly fat or overweight

Origin:

mid 17th century: from Latin obesus 'having eaten until fat', from ob-'away, completely' + esus (past participle of edere 'eat')

More than one third of U.S. adults (35.7%) are obese and approximately 17% (or 12.5 million) of children and adolescents aged 2-19 years are obese 

 CDC 2009-2010 

BODY MASS INDEX (BMI) noun

an approximate measure of whether someone is over- or underweight, calculated by dividing their weight in pounds by the square of their height in inches.

ACCORDING TO THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION

• Worldwide obesity has more than doubled since 1980.
• In 2008, more than 1.4 billion adults, 20 and older, were overweight. Of these over 200 million men and nearly 300 million women were obese.
• 65% of the world's population live in countries where overweight and obesity kills more people than underweight.
• More than 40 million children under the age of five were overweight in 2010.