Obesity is one of the greatest public health challenges of the 21st century. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) its prevalence has tripled in many countries of the European region since the 1980s (WHO 2013), and the numbers of those affected continue to rise at an alarming rate. More than 1.4 billion adults are overweight and at least 300 million women are classed as clinically obese (WHO 2013). England, along with the rest of the United Kingdom (UK), has one of the highest rates of obesity within Europe (European Commission 2011). There was a marked increase in the proportion of women that were obese, from 16% in 1993 to 26% in 2011 (HSCIC 2013).
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