The obesity and the overweight have become one of the biggest challenges for public health, reaching epidemic proportions. Is considered one of the main risk factor’s associated with chronic diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, musculoskeletal disorders, or certain types of cancer.
The World Health Organization (WHO) defines obesity and overweight as a abnormal or excessive accumulation of fat that can be harmful to health. Excess weight is determined through the Body Mass Index (BMI), which is the result of dividing weight in kilos by height in square meters. Thus, if an adult’s BMI is greater than 25, it is considered overweight, and greater than 30, obesity.
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At the state level, reports ENE-Covid study, carried out by the National Center for Epidemiology and the Spanish Agency for Food Safety and Nutrition and also published recently, ppresent the prevalence of obesity, overweight, normal weight and underweight in both the adult population and the child and adolescent population in Spain, disaggregated according to the main sociodemographic variables and geographical distribution.. According to the study, a third of children and adolescents in Spain are overweight, and one in ten is obese. In adults, the study concludes that 55.8% of the population residing in Spain is overweight and 18.7% is obese.
To address this problem, it is essential to work on obesity prevention. And to do this, it is necessary to create healthy and safe environments that allow the entire population to access healthy food and encourage regular physical activity. Regarding the individual actions that each person can do, they are:
- Reduce the consumption of fats and sugars.
- Eat a healthy diet rich in fruits, vegetables, legumes, whole grains and nuts.
- Perform regular physical activity (at least 150 minutes of moderate physical activity per week for an adult)
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