Obesity and Poverty

This book presents an up-to-date overview of the prevalence of overweight and obesity in the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, their medium- and long-term adverse effects, and their implications for planning public health actions. It also analyzes the characteristics specific to these countries in the worldwide process of nutritional transition, which is in turn related to the processes of demographic and epidemiological transition. In the epidemiological transition, the most diverse manifestations of the morbidity and mortality profile coexist: non-communicable chronic diseases, infectious diseases, emerging and reemerging diseases, violence, addiction, and diseases associated with environmental deterioration. In this context, the increase in obesity and overweight seen in the region is overlaid by an additional risk factor that differs from the traditional risk factors in the developed countries: the persistence or growth of inequalities and inequities in health. The four sections that make up this publication do not presume to be a full discussion of the complexity of the regional problem but seek rather to present its economic, sociocultural, and environmental determinants and to describe the specific characteristics of the epidemiological transition in a few selected countries of the Americas. In addition, they suggest some methodological aspects for studying obesity from the public health perspective, and discuss the relationship between certain factors of intrauterine life and adolescence that may be associated with obesity in adults.