There is increasing prevalence of obesity in childhood and adolescence with WHO paying marked attention for the global prevention of same with the public health problem it has assumed. Hence we decided to do a comprehensive review on this topic. We searched pubmed articles with the MeSH terms childhood obesity, adolescent obesity, causes of childhood obesity, management and epidemiology criteria of defining the same in various geographica areas of the world. In this aspect we found 10, 300 articles from 1960-2018 but of these only 90 articles were there after ruling out duplicate ones which we decided to use for the review. No metaanalysis was done. We selected articles pertaining to different geographical areas representing diagnostic criteria from countries like China, a large developing country to countries like Japan, USA, UK which are more developed. BMI and WC percentile curves in China, POW and BMI reference range for Japan, International Obesity Task Force (IOTF) criteria were used in Chilea, Singapore, Holland, USAand Great Britain besides using WHO updated BMI criteria. Success of implementing various educational, medical and public health interventions in some developed countries has resulted in plateauing of this increasing incidence yet in developing countries like china it is still a challenge. Further role of increasing prevalence of childhood obesity related to the developmental hypothesis of health and disease [DOHa D), maternal resource hypothesis, with effect of intrauterine fetal environment affecting fetal metabolism, infant feeding all influence development of childhood obesity and importance of tracking obesity from infancy to childhood and from childhood to adulthood for prevention of development of severe type2diabetesand other metabolic syndrome related diseases. Hence prevention was the most important factor for controlling this epidemic, besides knowledge regarding family environment and obesity of parents has a direct influence on children weight gain, role of increased television watching and munching simultaneously has to be kept in mind to have better preventative measures besides finding cause of loss of inhibitory control. Once therapy is considered lifestyle measures, diet therapy, avoidance of pharmacotherapy are the main principles. Still need of bariatric surgery is there in limited morbidly obese children and adolescents.