Stress anxiety and parental guilt as predictors of BMI and children's eating behavior

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Childhood obesity has reached epidemic proportions in several countries. In India and other countries of the developing world, its prevalence has started emerging and is growing at a rapid rate. As per WHO, obesity in childhood is associated with a higher chance of death and disability in adulthood. Children who are obese are more likely to grow into obese adults. Obesity gives rise to several non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as diabetes, blood pressure and other cardiac disease. Previously such diseases were known to affect people in their middle or old age, however now the age of getting affected by lifestyle diseases has drastically come down. The damage caused by most NCDs stemming from obesity, depends on the duration for which the person has remained obese. Therefore, people who became obese as children suffer from both short-term and long-term health consequences. The most significant health consequences of childhood overweight and obesity, that often do not become evident until adulthood, include diseases related to heart, diabetes and several types of cancers. Diabetes often results in multiple complications affecting almost all parts of body. Timely acknowledgement of existence and incremental nature of prevalence of childhood overweight and obesity would be the first step in combating it before the figures swell beyond control. 1.1 Obesity and Overweight As per the Global Health Observatory data, globally obesity has grown exponentially in terms of prevalence. According to this data, based on gender, women are more likely to be obese than men. In low and lower middle income countries, obesity among women is approximately double than among men. A link was also observed in raised BMI and income level of countries. The prevalence of overweight in high income and upper middle income countries was more than double that of low and lower middle income countries and the prevalence of obesity was found to be triple from 7% obesity in both sexes in lower middle income countries and 24% in upper middle income countries.