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The Body Mass Index (BMI) is the health industry's calculation for determining if someone is overweight, underweight or obese, and is used world-wide. The BMI is a straightforward and easy calculation, essentially the weight of the person, divided by the square of the height of the person. For obesity to be implied, a person must have a BMI of 30 or more, and to be considered overweight a BMI of 25 to 29. Amazingly, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), as of early 2009, there are more obese people on this planet than there are starving people, for the first time since worldwide records have been kept.

Of the approximately 1 Billion overweight people on the planet, nearly 1/3rd of them are classified as being clinically obese. That number is slightly larger than the number of people starving to death, and coming at a time where countries are throwing away tens of thousands of tonnes of food a year. Food waste has never been higher, and at a time when food conservation has never been more needed. So, why is obesity such a widespread problem? And this only takes into account the people who are recorded, and not the small villages and shanty-towns with no medical records keeping.

People are not working the land for themselves anymore. A mere 100 years ago, almost everyone tended their own fields and grew their own vegetables, fruits and berries, herbs and spices, and had animals like goats, chickens, pigs and cows for slaughter. People worked feeding and herding the animals, and tending to the land and the crops growing on that land. They rode horses or walked to where they had to go, cut their own trees and corded their own firewood for the winter's heat and cooking. All that exercise is now foregone.

Nowadays, people simply drive to the grocery store and stock up on salt and fat laden foods, and spend more money on fast food and microwavable meals than ever before. People either walked or rode horses to get to where they needed to go, and entertainment usually involved some sort of exercise, if not at least some form of physical exercise. With the lack of exercise, and the foods being mass-produced with fats and salts, people need to do more than they ever did, not less, in order to maintain a healthy body. Even child obesity is on the rise, and is not, as many people infer, a genetic trait. It may be genetic insofar that their parents make them unhealthy, fatty foods and allow them to stay up late playing on gaming systems, but obesity is not

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