> Obesity is defined as having a body mass index (BMI) of at least 30. Being
> overweight is defined as having a BMI of 25.
[and by this measure]
> more than half the nation's population is overweight or obese
I just ran a BMI calculation and it says I'm overweight. But I have a 32" waist. That just seems silly.
Could this whole epidemic just be an artifact of a badly scaled index?
Also has anyone ever measured whether the USA is fatter now than it was 20 years ago on a body fat percentage basis? It looks to me as if the BMI would say we were getting more obese as a nation if our average body fat percentage stayed the same but more people had gotten bigger muscles over the last 20 years by working out more. The result would be that we weighed more per unit height -- which is basically all the BMI measures.
Michael