Akademik

(gloh.BEES.uh.tee)

n.

The worldwide epidemic of obesity.

A woman frowning at her bathroom scale in St. Louis, a man whose pants are suddenly too tight in Jakarta, and a roly-poly child playing under a tree in Cairo all are part of a 1.1 billion-person trend called ''globesity.''

From Samoa to Kuwait, from Jamaica to Britain, in Latin America and even in countries where people die of malnutrition, the planet's citizens are gaining weight and slowing down.

Worldwide, 750 million adults are overweight, and 300 million more are obese.

— Ellen Creager, "Global ballooning," San Jose Mercury News, June 3, 2003

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the number of obese adults worldwide has increased by 50 percent since 1995, to 300 million last year. One-third of these people are believed to live in the developing world.

In 1996, WHO set up a global database on obesity and body mass index, the common measure of fatness. WHO calls obesity "one of today's most blatantly visible — yet most neglected — public health problems," and has dubbed the global epidemic "globesity."

— Lucian Kim, "England confronts 'globesity'," Christian Science Monitor, February 23, 2001

Globesity is a blend of the phrase global obesity, and the term was coined by the World Health Organization. Frustratingly, none of the WHO documents that use the term are dated, so I don't know when they made up the word. Here's a typical citation from one of the WHO documents:

At the other end of the malnutrition scale, obesity is one of today’s most blatantly visible — yet most neglected — public health problems. Paradoxically coexisting with undernutrition, an escalating global epidemic of overweight and obesity — "globesity" — is taking over many parts of the world. If immediate action is not taken, millions will suffer from an array of serious health disorders.

— "Controlling the global obesity epidemic," World Health Organization