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Obesity Prevention in Latin America

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Abstract

In Latin American countries, obesity prevalence has increased significantly as a result of rapid urbanization and an improvement in socioeconomic conditions. We report the prevalence of overweight and/or obesity and prevention efforts in five countries: Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Peru, and Chile. In children, the highest and lowest rates of obesity are found in Chile (23 % in 6-year-olds) and Peru (1.8 % in those <5 years), respectively. In adults, Mexico and Chile present similar high rates of obesity (around 35 %), whereas in Brazil and Colombia, the rates are around 20 % and 16.5 %, respectively. In general, the highest prevalence occurs in low-income women. Every country has developed initiatives to target obesity, from the government to the private sector and academia, mainly at the health sector and school settings. Food labeling is being addressed, but has not been implemented yet. Two interventions are described, a community-based in Mexico and a school-based in Chile. Because the increase in chronic diseases, especially diabetes, has paralleled that of obesity, effective prevention efforts are urgently needed.

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Conflict of Interest

Juliana Kain, Sonia Hernández Cordero, Diana Pineda, Augusto Ferreira de Moraes, Daniel Antiporta, Tatiana Collese, Elsie Costa de Oliveira Forkert, Laura González, Juan Jaime Miranda, and Juan Rivera declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Human and Animal Rights and Informed Consent

This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Chile, Santiago, Chile

    Juliana Kain

  2. National Institute of Public Health, Cuernavaca, Mexico

    Sonia Hernández Cordero & Juan Rivera

  3. Grupo Éxito, Medellín, Colombia

    Diana Pineda

  4. University of Antioquia, Medellín, Colombia

    Laura González

  5. School of Medicine, University of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil

    Augusto Ferreira de Moraes & Elsie Costa de Oliveira Forkert

  6. Growth, Exercise, Nutrition and Development, University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain

    Tatiana Collese

  7. Centro de Excelencia en Enfermedades Crónicas, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Lima, Peru

    Daniel Antiporta & Juan Jaime Miranda

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  1. Juliana Kain
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  2. Sonia Hernández Cordero
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  3. Diana Pineda
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  7. Elsie Costa de Oliveira Forkert
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  8. Laura González
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  10. Juan Rivera
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Correspondence to Juliana Kain.

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Kain, J., Hernández Cordero, S., Pineda, D. et al. Obesity Prevention in Latin America. Curr Obes Rep 3, 150–155 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13679-014-0097-8

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