Word of the day: globesity

Recently I keep catching news stories about 'globesity', the growing problem of obesity across the globe (yes, the word is yet another portmanteau). Michael Quinlon's World Wide Words has some good info about the origins of the term 'globesity' so I won't go into too much detail.

However, I have noticed several commentators talk or write about the "globesity epidemic": here in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, for example. The World Wide Words page also quotes the Guardian doing the same.

This leads me to ask: if globesity is, by its nature, global, shouldn't it always be a pandemic ("prevalent over a large part of the world" OED), not just an epidemic ("widespread in a community", OED)? And if yes, wouldn't a "globesity pandemic" be a tautology anyway?

And now I'm off home for my dinner.