Study Shows World-Wide Obesity
A one day survey of weight the world over shows that the rest of the world is catching up with the leader in overweight people, the United States. You can read a BBC news story summarizing the results, but a few things caught my attention.
Overweight is defined by having a BMI over 25. A BMI of over 30 is defined as obese. The problem I have with the “overweight” category is this. I play hockey and hike regularly. My main hobby is gardening. No one that looks at me would say I am overweight by even a few of pounds. But… I have a BMI of 26. Years ago when I was working out with weights more regularly, my BMI was 28. So according to all of these studies, I am overweight and at risk for heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. Clearly, because of the wide range of muscle and bone mass in humans, the use of just BMI to measure obesity is flawed. Some people with BMI’s of 22 could indeed be overweight, while others, like myself, with BMI’s well over 25 are not overweight at all.
Now this survey also looked at waist circumference in addition to BMI, but it is a bit unclear how that measurement factored into the interpretation of the results. I can not see how they determined what waist measurements were too high, but 56% of the men and 71% of the women in the study were said to be too fat around their mid-section.
There are also some numbers in the BBC report that are hard to figure out. One paragraph states that just 7% of people in eastern Asia were “obese” compared to 36% in Canada, and 40% in South Africa. It is stated that Canada, Europe and South Africa are catching up with the U.S., “long considered the country with the worst weight problem”. However, the article also states that 2/3 of Americans are overweight, with 1/3 of those obese. If I do the math correctly, this means 23% of Americans are obese, well below the levels in Canada and South Africa. Clearly something is wrong with the BBC’s interpretation of the numbers. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that the U.S. has an obesity rate of 32.9. Even the higher number now puts us below the level of Canada and South Africa.
It is also interesting to see that Americans, long thought of as the fattest humans on earth, may be less overweight than people in many other countries. It is also interesting that Eastern Asia, which I guess is basically Japan, has the lowest level of obesity at 7%. This is quite a low number compared to the rest of the world. Regardless of the true numbers, there can be no argument that falling into the BMI’s obese category of greater that 30 is an indication of real problems with your health. In the U.S. if 70% of people are overweight and 33% obese, we have a real problem. I wonder if any studies have shown exactly how much of our health care dollars are “eaten” up by this obesity epidemic?
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