Health and social scientists need to weigh in.

To the Editor: In South Africa, a substantial segment of the population is overweight.1 In 2000, non-communicable diseases (NCDs) accounted for 37% of deaths among adults2 and this figure is rising alongside expanding waistlines. Overweight children are twice as likely to have elevated blood pressure, 13 times more likely to have elevated insulin levels, and 7 times more likely to have higher triglyceride levels.3 This noxious cocktail of risk factors predisposes overweight young people to develop NCDs as adults. The Birth to Twenty (Bt20) cohort4 found that more than 70% of black female caregivers were overweight, and a staggering two-thirds of these adults were obese. Also, 9% of black female adolescents at age 13 were overweight and an additional 6% were obese.