[Brad Lockyer]

You would have to be blind not to have noticed that the weight of the average person has been going up over recent decades, and I’m no exception.

But the world is approaching a truly worrying weight milestone that should give us all pause.

According to the World Health Organization, almost one billion people globally can now be categorised as ‘obese’.

Obesity is defined as having a body mass index (BMI) equal to or greater than 30. The claim is based on analysis of BMI changes in the populations of 190 countries.

Even more alarming, rates of obesity among children have quadrupled across the last 32 years.
Professor Majid Ezzati, senior author of the study, told Guardian Australia he was very concerned” the epidemic of obesity evident among adults in most of the world is now being seen in school-age children and adolescents.

“At the same time, hundreds of millions are still affected by undernutrition, particularly in some of the poorest parts of the world,” he said.

“To successfully tackle both forms of malnutrition it is vital we significantly improve the availability and affordability of healthy, nutritious foods.”

[Karl Marx]

BMI is a very bad indicator to use as it only uses 3 factors. Sex, height and weight.
So it’s a very misleading indicator and every nutritionist I have read or spoken do says the same. Don’t use BMI.
To scientifically work out if one is overweight, obese, healthy etc. takes in a lot more factors and tests like weight, height, body fat %, body muscle %, Types of body fat especially Visceral fat, also known as toxic fat that can cause many health issues even on skinny people who have low BMI.

[David]

Whilst BMI is not perfect it is an easy figure to calculate yourself. If your BMI is greater than 25 you are overweight and should do something about it, if your BMI is over 30 you are in deep trouble. ~65% of Americans have a BMI > 25, so expect more and more heart attacks and strokes, maybe Trump as he is overweight.

[Author]

Posts