Hacker News Reader

CDC defines obesity as having a Body Mass Index above 30[0]. Per their example, a 5'9 person weighing 203 lbs or more would be considered obese.

0: https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/adult/defining.html

And before anyone complains about BMI, it's useful as a population-level measurement:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5896802/#:~:tex....

Yeah, it's not a particularly good statistic about an individual person's body except as a suuuuuper rough guideline but if everyone's BMI goes up something's happening.

For the rest of us:

If you are 1.70 m and have a BMI of above 30, your weight is more than 86.7 kg.

For obese people who are 1.80 m, your weight is more than 97.2 kg.

42% is an absolutely insane number of obese people - what on earth is going on?

Direct link to the report referenced in the press release:

https://www.tfah.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/TFAHObesityR...

Page 8 defines "Overweight" as BMI 25+ and "Obesity" as 30+.

Source: https://www.tfah.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/2019ObesityR...

They're classifying obesity as having a BMI >= 30.

Likely BMI of 30+