Americans now have official guidelines to tell them just how fat they are.
The guidelines, from an expert panel convened by the National Institutes of
Health, use body mass index (BMI) to determine whether a person is too heavy.
They define anyone with a BMI of more than 25 as overweight, and more than 30 as
obese. BMI is weight in kilograms divided by the square of height in metres. A
waist circumference of more than 100 centimetres in men and 89 centimetres in
women presents additional health risks for people with a BMI of more than 25.
According to the guidelines, 55 per cent of adult Americans are overweight or
obese.
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