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American Journal of Epidemiology Advance Access published online on June 16, 2007
American Journal of Epidemiology, doi:10.1093/aje/kwm169
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American Journal of Epidemiology Copyright © 2007 by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health All rights reserved; printed in U.S.A.

The Obesity Epidemic: Looking in the Mirror

Shiriki K. Kumanyika

From the Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA

Correspondence to Dr. Shiriki K. Kumanyika, Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, 8th Floor Blockley Hall, 423 Guardian Drive, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6021 (e-mail: skumanyi@mail.med.upenn.edu).

Received for publication May 4, 2007. Accepted for publication May 4, 2007.

The first 10% of the full text of this article appears below.

This editorial is an invitation to read carefully the issue of Epidemiologic Reviews that accompanies the August 1 issue of the Journal. The focus is obesity. Obesity is an increasingly dominant aspect of the health profiles of adults and children across the globe (1), leading to an urgent need for evidence to support advocacy and for corrective policies and intervention programs targeting an array of societal sectors. The main causes of the epidemic can be stated simplistically: populations are consuming more calories than they are expending and accumulating fat as a result (2). But this story is quite complex. The obesity epidemic has become a metaphor for the adverse health effects of economic and technological advancement. Its multilevel causation extends from genes and individual psychobiology through families to communities to whole societies. Although not of infectious origin as far as we . . . [Full Text of this Article]


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