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WASHINGTON (AFP) - Unless public health takes urgent measures, one in five children in the United States will be obese by the year 2010, the Institute of Medicine warned in a report.

Currently, one third of American children are obese or at risk of becoming so. The rate of childhood obesity has jumped from 16 percent in 2002, to 17.1 percent in 2004 and will reach 20 percent in four years, the report said.

"The good news is that Americans have begun to recognize that childhood obesity is a serious public health problem, and initiatives to address it are under way," said Jeffrey Koplan, who heads an institute committee on preventing childhood obesity.

SYDNEY (AFP) - Radical international agricultural reform to cut down on the production of oils, fat and sugar — not diet tricks — is needed to halt the global obesity epidemic, scientists have warned.

Farm policies such as government agricultural subsidies have been damaging peoples’ health for decades, leading obesity expert Philip James told the 10th International Congress on Obesity in Sydney on Monday.

Weight loss, in the context of medicine or health, is a reduction of body weight, typically due to catabolism of stored reserves inside the body. Limited short-term weight loss may be caused by the loss of water from the body; however, the typical reason for weight loss is that the human body is losing more chemical energy in work and heat than it is gaining from food. [citation needed] The body then uses its stored reserves of chemical energy, such as fat or protein, to make up the deficit. The byproducts of using these reserves then leave the body, reducing body weight. [citation needed] This process may be triggered by the reduction of the Caloric content of the diet, an increase in physical activity, the immune system fighting off a disease, or other causes[citation needed]. Weight loss is a common symptom in medicine.

In a less formal sense, weight loss may refer to the loss of body fat in an effort to improve fitness, health, and/or appearance. This form of weight loss can be achieved by a combination of healthy eating patterns and regular physical exercise[citation needed]. Other methods of losing weight include use of drugs that decrease appetite, as well as surgery. Liposuction is the surgical removal of fat from targeted areas beneath the skin. Bariatric surgery artificially reduces the size of the stomach, reducing the intake of food energy. Some of these treatments may have serious side-effects.

Therapeutic weight loss can help relieve symptoms of a variety of conditions, such as diabetes [citation needed], back pain [citation needed] and disorders of the spine[citation needed], pain in the knee[citation needed] or legs[citation needed], and many heart conditions[citation needed]. For healthy weight loss, a physician should be consulted to develop a weight loss plan that is tailored to the individual.[citation needed]

Article source: wikipedia.com