Revisões de LiteRatuRa / BiBliography reviews a complexidade da determinação da obesidade infantil Abstract According to the World Health Organization (WHO), in recent years, childhood obesity has affected children of all ages in developed and developing countries. At least 41 million children worldwide, under 5 years old, are overweight/obese. Obesity is a multifactorial disease that involves the interaction of several factors such as biological, environmental and psychosocial that make it difficult to distinguish its etiology. The difficulty in determining childhood obesity suggests, therefore, the need for a theoretical deepening and also the identification of current scientific production on the subject. Due to this context, the present study was carried out from a bibliographical review, through works published in the period from 2005 to 2017. The search was performed in the Scielo, Medline and Lilacs databases. From 14 selected and analyzed articles, it was concluded that indeterminate factors can contribute to childhood obesity, among them the family context, media, sedentarism, urbanization and purchasing power. The association of two or more determinants in childhood obesity warns that if uncontrolled, numbers of children with obesity may be higher.