Obesity

From a Credit Suisse investment report

The U.S. is usually considered the consumer capital of the world and consumption of food is no exception as the world-leading obesity levels suggest. Using data from Center for Disease Control and the Forum for Health Economics and Policy, we estimate that 54% of the U.S. population is overweight and that 26% is obese. We expect the rates to continue to rise to reach 58% (overweight) and 30% (obese) by 2015 and 60% (overweight) and 32% (obese) by 2020 .More than half the U.S. is overweight or obese, and this will continue to rise

So of course we all want to know are we overweight or obese. Turns out the “measure”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity called BMI is pretty simple

BMI = weight in kg / (height in meters squared)

For those folks still living in the US, the conversion is

BMI = wieght in pounds * 703 / (height in inches squared)

BTW, I’m at 24.1, so just on the hairy edge of “normal weight”. I shouldn’t have had that bowl of soup for lunch! According to this, I have to lose 11 pounds to get to a BMI of 22.5 which is the midpoint. Sad to say I haven’t weighted that much for three decades. Sigh. Well, at least 5 pounds then!