74% of women are obese when defined as having more than 30% body fat

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Sunday, September 02, 2012 2:30 pm Email this article

Seventy-four percent (74%) of U.S. women are obese when defined as having more than 30% body fat or more according to a study by Eric Braverman, MD and Nirav R. Shah, MD.

Using a BMI cutoff of 30, only 26% of these women were classified as obese.

BMI Cutoff of 30 missed nearly two-thirds of the obese women

BMI of 30 only caught 26% of these women

Using a Body Mass Index (BMI) cutoff of 30, it said that only 26% of these women when really nearly twice this many, 74%, were obese when measuring their body fat and identifying those men as obese if their body fat was 30% or more.

Reference

Reference

Shah NR, and Braverman ER. Measuring adiposity in patients: the utility of body mass index (BMI), percent body fat, and leptin. PLoS One 2012; 7(4): e33308.

The paper is on-line here.

Thanks

Thanks to Alan Schulman, MD

Thanks to Alan Schulman, MD who sent me this article.

Articles on the same subject can be found here:

• BMI not perfect

• Measurments of obesity

• Obesity statistics

• Obesity Statistics, US States

• Prevalence of Obesity