ABSTRACT
Prevention of obesity is a priority for the simple reason
that it is far easier in the modern food-rich environment to
gain excess weight than it is to lose it. A specific focus on
child obesity is considered important for two reasons:
first, lifestyle patterns are learned at an early age, and
unhealthy patterns can lead to a lifetime of increased risk
of ill-health; and second, the pathological effects of obe-
sity are in many cases a product of the time the individual
has been obese as well as the severity of the obesity.
Interventions that can maintain or improve health behav-
ior from an early age and that prevent long-term obesity
are likely to be far more cost-effective over the longer
period than managing and treating obesity and obesity-
related diseases after they have developed.