Chris Berdik in Harvard Magazine:
ALARMINGLY, the rate of obesity in the United States has tripled during the past six decades: according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 42 percent of American adults are obese. Globally, more than a billion people live with the condition, according to an analysis published in The Lancet in March, which found that, worldwide, the prevalence of obesity has more than doubled among adults since 1990, while quadrupling among children and adolescents. Decades of public awareness campaigns about the tremendous physical and mental health toll of the condition and coordinated efforts to promote healthier eating and exercise have failed to stem what the World Health Organization has called “an escalating global epidemic.”
Many obesity experts argue that an oversimplification of this complex condition, particularly the reliance on body mass index (BMI)—a simple calculation of weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared—has hindered effective prevention and treatment efforts. BMI as a measure of obesity, they say, has diagnostic limitations, a problematic history in which white males were the measure of normal body types, and a tendency to make weight the focus of concern rather than a person’s overall health.
More here.
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