PS285 Chapter Notes -Childhood Obesity, Caffeine, Preterm Birth
Document Summary
Eating and drinking are social activities that are rich in symbolic, moral and cultural meanings. Balance between energy input and expenditure have critical importance. Habits are influenced by an interaction of processes that include conditioning, customs, culture and environment (climate change) Health action at the level of policy and regulation is very important. The world health organization predicts there will be 2. 3 billion overweight adults in the world by 2015 and more than 700 million of them will be obese. Voluntary agreements with industry have proved completely ineffective. Obesity has multiple causes: genetic predisposition, culture, diet and inactivity. Obesogenic diets are becoming very common in poor countries. Obesification is also occurring at lower income levels. Dumanovsky et al. (2009) concluded that menu calorie posting may help awareness, but reducing portion sizes and changing popular combination meals would be best. Food industry uses strategies to maintain their profits: Increase serving size and adding price inducements to order larger sizes.
