There is overwhelming evidence that obesity is a threat to health. 'The prevalence of obesity has risen up to threefold in the last two decades. Half of all adults and one in five children in the WHO European Region are overweight. Of these, one third are already obese, and numbers are increasing fast. Overweight and obesity contribute to a large proportion of noncommunicable diseases, shortening life expectancy and adversely affecting the quality of life. More than one million deaths in the Region annually are due to diseases related to excess body weight' [1]. While in developed countries obesity is more common among socially disadvantaged groups, the reverse is the case in low-income countries [2].
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