Executive Summary

Globally, nearly three million people die each year from the complications of obesity. Excess body weight is directly linked to increasing risk of type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, and some forms of cancer. Over the last 30 years, obesity has become a global pandemic and a major contributor to rising rates of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) – a trend that threatens to reverse 50 years of improvements in life expectancy. Obesity among women also contributes to increased risk of lifethreatening complications in pregnancy and childbirth. It adversely influences the future health of their children through gestational insults that lead to greater risk of obesity and type 2 diabetes later in life. Experts agree on the background cause of this rapid rise in obesity rates: namely, that people around the world are now living in environments that make unhealthy eating and physical inactivity easy and desirable. Obesity is not the produ