Word: bmi
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...There's no question that people are getting bigger. Even the most strident obesity skeptics concede that across Western populations, adults are on average 7 kg heavier than they were 25 years ago. Nor does anyone dispute that, according to the standard measuring tool of body mass index, or BMI (which is calculated by dividing body weight in kilograms by height in meters squared), the majority of Australian and New Zealand adults are either overweight or obese. Based on its National Health Survey 2004-05, the Australian Bureau of Statistics reports that 62% of men and 45% of women...
...this amounts to a crisis. But instead of measured debate, what people are hearing is a chorus of obesity alarmism. There's another side to the obesity story. Argued with varying degrees of fervor by epidemiologists, skeptics and sundry others, it points out the arbitrary nature of the BMI classifications, throws doubt on attempts to link high BMI and premature death, asks who stands to gain from the fanning of obesity fears, and questions the value of hounding populations to lose weight. "In general, we just don't know what the long-term consequences of rising obesity are going...
...spare tire-you're overweight or obese. And obesity is a disease. That's the term of choice, anyway, for health authorities such as the Australasian Society for the Study of Obesity, which says obesity "is a complex and multifactorial disease." But obesity-defined as a BMI of 30 or greater-is no more a disease than is cigarette smoking or sedentary living. People can be obese but healthy, just as they can be thin and sick. "It really doesn't make sense to call obesity a disease-it's a risk factor," says Stephen MacMahon, principal director...
...Three years ago the state legislature approved an unusual program calling for every public school student in the state to be evaluated for obesity using a standard height-weight calculation known as body mass index, or BMI. At the time, figures from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) not only showed that the incidence of child obesity had doubled in the U.S. since 1980, they revealed that Arkansas had one of the highest rates in the nation: 20.9% of the state's youngsters were overweight while another 17% fell into the borderline "at risk" category. Nationally the figures were...
...similar shift in thinking is occurring among weight-loss researchers. For years, their best measure for how dangerous excess weight could be was body mass index (BMI), a formula that combined height and weight. A high BMI meant that you were carrying too much body mass for your height, putting you at risk of developing diabetes, hypertension, heart disease or stroke. The problem, as physicians quickly found out, was that body mass includes not just excess body fat but muscle as well. So fit people with dense muscle mass would consistently register as overweight and unhealthy. That led Dr. Jean...