Overweight or obesity in adolescents has reached epidemic proportions in the USA and other industrialized countries. These conditions, although often lumped together in research and in commentaries, reflect adolescents’ being toward the heavier point of a continuum that would range from underweight to morbidly obese. The terms may be used interchangeably, but there is no doubt that, in the USA, a considerable percentage of adolescents suffer from too much body fat. The prevalence of obesity (body mass index [BMI] >95th percentile) among adolescents aged 12–19 years is now one in six (17.6%); and one in three (34.9%) US adolescents are overweight or obese (BMI >85th percentile) (Story et al. 2009). Other industrialized countries, such as Canada, Japan, Germany, and China also are beginning to experience increasing problems related to obesity (Cornette 2008). Being on the overweight side of the weight continuum means being afflicted with a serious, chronic disease that can cause...
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Levesque, R.J.R. (2011). Obesity and Overweight. In: Levesque, R.J.R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Adolescence. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1695-2_447
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1695-2_447
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