euro pediatrics 2018

Child and Adolescent Obesity

Childhood and Adolescent Obesity is a condition where excess body fat negatively affects a child's health or well-being. As techniques to decide muscle to fat ratio ratios straightforwardly are troublesome, the diagnosis of obesity is often based on BMI. Due to the rising prevalence of obesity in children and its many adverse health effects it is being recognized as a serious public health concern. The term overweight rather than obese is often used in children as it is less stigmatizing.

Obesity is a serious, long-term (chronic) disease. Overweight and obesity refer to having too much body fat. But it’s difficult to directly measure body fat, so a guideline called the body mass index (BMI) is used to estimate it. The BMI uses the weight and height of a child to come up with a result. The result is compared with standards for children of the same gender between the ages of 2 and 20 years.