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Obesity is defined as the diffuse and excessive accumulation of adipose tissue. It is characterized by overeating and relative inactivity. Despite numerous attempts to establish a precise criterion for its diagnosis, body weight that is at least 10 percent beyond the norm because of fatty tissue is generally regarded as obesity. Overweight is defined more broadly. It refers to any increase in body weight over a statistically determined average, whether the excess weight takes the form of the increased muscle and bone mass of athletes, the edema fluid of cardiac patients, or the adiposity of fat persons. Notwithstanding this technical distinction between obesity and overweight, these two terms are often used interchangeably.
Standards for normal body weight among men and women have been established by lifeinsurance statistics.’ On the basis of this criterion, estimates concerning the prevalence of obesity vary from 20 to 50 percent in the United States.2-5 In England, Craddock suggests that the majority of women over the age of thirty are overweight.6 In Sweden, according to a survey cited by Bruch, 80 percent of the female population over the age of forty are overweight.7 Although men are statistically less likely to be overweight than women, those with sedentary occupations tend to gain weight more frequently than men whose work requires greater activity.
If the figures above seem large, it may help to remember that they are determined from studies of entire populations, regardless of age. Hence, the fattening process, which coincides in many of us with the aging process, may easily slip us into the category of people who are more than 10 percent overweight. Because morbidity and death also occur with advancing age, casually analyzed data may seem to suggest that morbidity and death are associated with excessive fatness. Recent evidence suggests that obesity may have been exaggerated as an etiological factor in the occurrence of chronic disease and mortality. It appe