Obesity: the real pandemic of the 21st century

Two types of dramatic transitions are currently taking place in Mexico: demographic and epidemiological.Demographics show us that even though Mexico has a young population, the population pyramid is tending towards a progressively narrower base.Today there are a greater number of children aged 5 to 9 years than there are from 0 to 4, and more children aged 10 to 14 than 5 to 9 years.The widest point of the pyramid is currently that of 10-15 year olds. 1 Since fertility rates have dropped, the number of births has also dropped and the largest population groups will progressively become older.In 2050 one out of every four Mexicans will be 65 or older.These epidemiological and demographic transitions in our country are happening rapidly and are profound.Within a period of 50 years Mexico will complete an ageing process which took Europe 200 years to complete. 2ocial and economic transition has demonstrated that more people lose their lives through accidents (the first cause of death in young people aged between 18 and 35), and that there are more people with different types of disabilities which are either secondary to these same accidents or progressive due to advanced age or chronic non-communicable diseases and this constitutes a major challenge.A sedentary lifestyle is highly frequent today.We all suffer from higher stress levels than we did in previous years and we often adopt unhealthy behavioural patterns