Abstract
Childhood obesity is manifested when there develops a discrepancy between intake and output of energy, disturbing the original steady state and formation of a fresh steady state at a higher level, resulting in increased body-fat storage. There needs to be a delicate balance established between tissue synthesis (height gain) and fat storage (mass gain) in order to prevent obesity. Various definitions of childhood obesity have been proposed. During 1995-2001, Poskitt, representing European Childhood Obesity Group (ECOG), tried to deal with this issue. In a 1995 paper, she expressed concern over lack of childhood-obesity definition. In 2000, she mentioned that the concept of relative body-mass index (BMI) had been generally accepted. In 2001, she observed that BMI could not be considered as offering the ‘best’ definition, although it might be ‘useful’ and ‘practical’. In 2000 Cole and co-workers linked childhood obesity to adult-obesity-cutoff point (BMI 30 kg/m 2 ). In a 2010 paper, Flegal and co-workers gave 3 BMI-for-age categories: ‘normal’, ‘intermediate’ and ‘high’. The first one most unlikely, whereas the last one most likely, to have high adiposity. In a 2011 paper, Rolland-Cachera and coworkers, on behalf of ECOG, defined 3 cutoffs of BMI, constituting four ranges: ‘thin’, ‘normal’, ‘overweight’ and ‘obese’. During the same year, Zhao and Grant defined obesity as excess of body fat. In a 2015 paper, Al-Gindan and coworkers expressed the opinion that most national-survey analyses equating BMI in excess of 30 kg/m 2with ‘obesity’ led to survey-data misinterpretation. This paper puts forward the point-of-view that ‘overweight’ must be differentiated from ‘overfat’. One needs a definition based, solely, on measurement of mass, not measurement of fat, which is difficult to obtain in a reproducible manner. Childhood obesity has been defined as the condition in which a youngster is required to shed off net mass at the end of 6-month period as compared to current mass based on ‘Growth-and-Obesity VectorRoadmap’ recommendations. In this work, ‘BMI-based-optimal mass’ is compared with ‘height-percentile-based-optimal mass’ and mathematical relationship is proposed for losing net mass within the next 6 months.
