Overweight and obesity in children

Childhood and adolescent obesity is an urgent public health concern and an emerging medical issue. The WHO describes it asThe WHO describes it as "the first non-infectious and growing epidemic worldwide" that affects all countries and all socioeconomic categories, and it represents one of the most serious public health challenges of the 21st century that is evolving with uncontrollable progression.It is a complex pathology and this is related to its multiple and heterogeneous determinants involving non-modulable genetic and epigenetic factors and modulable factors related to exposure to an obesogenic environment.Obesity in children is serious because of its deleterious multisystemic consequences that can set in early during childhood or adolescence, and its high risk of persistence into adulthood, which would be responsible for a high morbidity and mortality. The prevention of obesity must represent the main axis of the fight against this multi-faceted epidemic through the implementation of health programs at several levels of action.