Obesity became a major health threat for higher
income countries in the last decades of the 20 th
Century and now early in the 21 st Century, most of
the world must consider this challenge to our ongoing
quest for better health and longer healthy life for all
our citizens. A particular concern, both for the long
term impact of its sequelae and because it may be
more amenable to prevention, is childhood obesity.
Preventing childhood obesity must be one of the top
priorities of public health and clinical medicine and
indeed, public policy