One look at the obesity statistics of the world – the Western world in particular – is enough to give you several days and nights of indigestion! Look at this, for example:

-- More than 145 million people in the US are obese, and over 5% of these are in the morbidly obese category

Or this –

-- 29% of men and 28% of women in the age group of 15-25 are obese. This figure more than triples itself in the higher age group of people in their mid fifties, which shows that obesity increases with age.

Equally grim are the obesity statistics in children.

--Obesity in children has tripled since the 1990s. Today, 1 in every 6 children in the US is overweight or obese.

The American National Center for Health records that obesity in the US has climbed from 13% to an alarming 32% in the last forty years. Today approximately two-thirds of the American population records a BMI (Body Mass Index) of 25 or higher!

The scenario is much the same in the rest of the world too. In England and Australia, more than 44% of men and 36% of women are overweight. In the UK, approximately 17% of children below 15 are obese.

So, what do these shocking statistics signify?

Obesity is the condition in which a person accumulates dangerously high proportions of body fat. Today, if a person has a BMI of over 28, they are considered obese and those with a BMI of over 25 are overweight. Nationwide surveys show that more and more people are currently falling in the overweight category and an alarming number of them go on to become obese. Obesity is dangerous because it is the direct precursor of a number of potentially debilitating conditions like Diabetes Mellitus, Osteoarthritis, Sleep Apnea, Hypertension and heart problems. So, anyone the body of an obese person is like a ticking time bomb. Children are the worst hit by the obesity epidemic because they become hapless victims for all their lives. They will never know what it means to be healthy.

The only way to defeat the obesity epidemic is to keep weight levels sufficiently low. To do this, one would have to eat sensibly and exercise effectively.