Overweight and obesity can be simply viewed as a result of the equilibrium between energy intake and expenditure or widely viewed as a public health issue. For a better understanding of the obesity pandemic, the ecological model should be taken into account in the broad sense of the term, including mediator factors, such as education and behaviour changes, and also globalisation as an important determinant of overweight.¹ Childhood and adolescence are critical periods for the development of obesity. Overweight and prevalence of obesity are increasing mainly in children from low socioeconomic strata. The effect of environmental factors, such as social class, family structure and gender, in developing overweight, is not fully established even in adolescents. However, adolescents from low social classes already have a high risk of developing overweight, maternal education and maternal obesity being important associated factors.²

To prevent social inequalities in distribution of obesity, interventions should be carried out by improving maternal education. Even nowadays, there is still a lack of opportunities for women to obtain high educational levels. This is important because of the risk for their children and adolescents to become overweight, and also because among adult women, high overweight rates tend to be associated with low education levels. Moreover, political and social measures should also be planned to promote the sharing of parenting charges within the family (father, mother or others). Identifying paternal and maternal obesity seems to be useful in order to detect risk groups for developing prevention programmes. The target population of prevention programmes to decrease obesity in children and adolescents should be children and adolescents, as well as their parents. In future, in order to reduce the increasing rates of overweight in adolescents, prevention programmes should be based on an integrated paradigm dealing together with parents and adolescents, and taking into account gender-related risk factors. Preventing obesity is a challenge for the control of other nutrition-related diseases in adult life, such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. Social and political interventions are also needed to reduce health inequalities.