Obesity rates are soaring throughout North America (Wickelgren, 1998). With obesity reaching almost epidemic proportions in the United States, and the threat of a global epidemic, we must watch this alarming increase carefully (Hill & Peters. 1998). Obesity is defined as: "an excess of adipose tissue" (A Report of the Surgeon General, 1996). The two most common measures of obesity are Body Mass Index (BMI is a ratio of weight to height) and relative weight index, such as percent desirable weight (Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, 1959). BMI is the most frequently used measure of obesity as it has a strong correlation with more direct measures of adiposity, such as underwater weighing (A Report of the Surgeon General, 1996). Some have proposed that genetics are at the root of obesity. While genetics may play a role in obesity, it is still not clear what role this is (Chagnon et al., 2000). While a defacto underlying cause for obesity still remains clouded in mystery, the environment plays a large part in causing obesity (Hill & Peters, 1998). Hill & Peters (1998) see obesity as an environmental disease caused by the promotion of behaviours that lead to obesity. With the United States' Institute of Medicine claiming that fat people cost the United States more than $70 billion annually in both direct health care costs and indirect ones such as lost productivity, this truly is an epidemic that must be solved. Americans spend another $40 billion per year on weight-loss treatments, mostly in the form of diets and dietary foods (Wickelgren, 1998). That is a total of approximately $110 billion dollars of the gross domestic product of the U.S., not a small sum of money in anyone's books. Such a sum could surely be used more wisely elsewhere.An individual with a BMI * 25 kg/m2 is considered overweight, while an individual with a BMI * 30 kg/m2 is considered obese (Hill & Peters, 1998). With over 22.5% of the current U.S. population consi...
