Obesity is a disease characterized by the excessive accumulation of corporal fat, which produces deleterious effects to the health. There is consent in the literature that its etiology is multi-factorial, involving biological, historical, ecological, political, social-economical, psychosocial and cultural aspects. In that sense, this article's objective is to talk about the multi-factorial character of obesity, involving the wide variety of environmental and genetic factors implicated in its etiology, starting from secondary studies of literature revision in the main bases of data and specialized libraries. Nowadays, obesity has been considered the most important nutritional disorder in the developed countries and the ones in development, due to the increase of its incidence. The approach of the genetic, metabolic, psychosocial, symbolic, and cultural aspects in addition to the lifestyle allowed to base obesity as a plural illness, and showed the necessity to create public politics with multidiscipline and inter-sectorial actions, that value the partnership between government and civil society, in the prevention and combat of obesity and the promotion of health, making possible the community's participation in that process, through responsibility and self care.
Obesity; Nutritional transition; Risk factors; Public politics