Obesity

Malaysia has experienced rapid economic development in recent decades leading to increase urbanization, affluence, and change in lifestyles and nutritional status of the population. Obesity among adult has became serious problem in health department as it increases rapidly. Hence, I will discuss on obesity as a contemporary issue in Malaysia. World health Organization (WHO) had defined that obesity is an abnormal or excessive fat accumulation that presents a risk to health. A crude population measure of obesity is the body mass index (BMI), a person’s weight (in kilograms) divided by the square of his or her height (in meters). A person with a BMI of 30 or more is generally considered obese. A person with a BMI equal to or more than 25 is considered overweight. Based on the report stated by the Ministry of Health (MOH), It shows the huge increasing percent from 4.4 percent at 2006 then increased to 15.1 percent in 2011. From this statistic, it shows that obesity among Malaysian are becoming a serious problem.
The escalation of obesity, once thought to be an urban phenomenon, has now spread to the rural population at an alarming rate. As Malaysia proceeds rapidly towards a developed economy status, the health of its population will probably continue to deteriorate. Therefore, a national strategy needs to be developed to tackle both dietary and activity contributors to the excess weight gain of the Malaysian population.
One of the factors that influence the increasing factor of obesity is fast food intake. As the economy pass by, the fast food restaurant can be fine everywhere in Malaysia. The first franchise fast food was brought into Malaysia in 1963 was A&W by Mr and Mrs Lie Boff from USA. The Lie Boff family opened their first outlet in Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman making it the first fast food outlet in Malaysia. From there, malaysian community start eat fast food and one by one the fast food restaurant came into the malaysia like KFC, McDonalds, and many