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June 30, 2003
CDC: Overweight Statistics Don't Tell The Whole Story
- “Overweight may or may not be due to increases in body fat. It may also be due to an increase in lean muscle. For example, professional athletes may be very lean and muscular, with very little body fat, yet they may weigh more than others of the same height. While they may qualify as ‘overweight’ due to their large muscle mass, they are not necessarily ‘over fat,’ regardless of BMI.”
- “Two people can have the same BMI, but a different percent body fat. A bodybuilder with a large muscle mass and a low percent body fat may have the same BMI as a person who has more body fat because BMI is calculated using weight and height only.”
Don’t take our word for it. These quotes come from the website of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It’s nice to see that the government agency charged with controlling and preventing disease occasionally recognizes what we’ve been saying for years: that the obesity debate suffers from unwarranted hype and an over-reliance on a BMI scale that was arbitrarily redefined in 1998 -- not to mention a plague of money-hungry trial lawyers and dietary scolds like those at the misnamed Center for Science in the Public Interest.
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