Dietetic treatment in severe obesity

Abstract

In the last decades there has been a dramatic increase of obese subjects in many countries with the subsequent increase of health related problems, such as diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular diseases. Even though several differential approaches, as media communication, guidelines formulation, have been performed in many different countries to solve this burden global health problem, no satisfactory results have been obtained. Personalized nutritional programs have been selected by obese subjects. Thus the correct approach would be to prescribe a caloric restricted diet in order to achieve long term weight loss in overweight or obese people. The aim in planning weight-reduction diets is that total food intake should meet recommended dietary allowance/adequate intake levels with the maintenance of the equilibrium among nutrients. If the nutritional approach fails or it is not sufficient to obtain significant weight loss, bariatric surgical intervention has been developed for the treatment of morbid-obese patients or severe obese patients with comorbidities as recommended by the American Society for Bariatric Surgery (A.S.B.S.) guidelines.