The prevalence of overweight in adults has increased by about 50% within only 7 years in the USA [1]. A similar trend has been observed in children in the USA and other Western countries [2–6] and overweight has been identified as one of the most important health problems of children [7]. The dynamic of the increasing prevalence is impressive. In Western societies, Australia, Europe, USA, an acceleration of this process has been reported for the 1980s [2, 4]. In the 1990s, there was a shift of the acceleration towards developing countries [8]. These dramatic changes make overweight and obesity a major issue of public health. The objective of this article is to describe prevalence and secular trends of prevalence rates for childhood obesity on an international level and to assess the changes in the BMI distribution between populations and for different ethnicities, cultural and socio-economic subgroups within populations. Temporal changes regarding the distribution of some known or suspected risk factors for obesity will be described. The potential contribution of epidemiology to elucidate the etiology of the adiposity epidemic will be discussed.
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