HEADLINE:Tell the Truth: Does This Index Make Me Look Fat?
BYLINE: By GINA KOLATA
BODY:
THERE'S an overweight man in the White House and his name is George W. Bush.
Yes, the president of the United States, known for his robust good
health, is officially overweight, according to the standards of the
National Institutes of Health. At 6 feet and 194 pounds, his body mass
index, or B.M.I., a measurement of height relative to weight, is 26.4,
and 25 or above is officially overweight for both sexes.
And so President Bush joins about 65 percent of Americans who are
overweight or obese -- a status derived solely from that body mass
index dividing line of 25.
Of course, the
authorities can be wrong when it comes to matters of weight and health.
Just last week, for example, the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention said its previous estimate that 400,000 Americans die each
year from obesity and overweight was too high.
So, does President Bush's B.M.I. of 26.4 actually make much difference
to his health? ''Probably not,'' says Dr. George Bray, an obesity
researcher at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center of Louisiana
State University. ''Body mass is an index from which you start to make
an evaluation of an individual.''
''The
meaning of B.M.I. has to be modulated by other factors, including age,
gender, physical activity, race and central fat distribution,'' he
added, referring to the amount of fat a person carries around the waist
and abdomen.
The National Heart, Lung and
Blood Institute agrees, and includes high blood pressure and cigarette
smoking as factors in determining whether weight is a problem.
Dr. Eric Oliver, a political scientist at the University of Chicago who
is writing a book about the politics behind the obesity epidemic, says
that the more one looks into the health claims behind the overweight
designation, the more arbitrary they seem. ''From a scientific
perspective, there is no way you could make those claims based on the
data,'' he said.
Before 1998, a man was
officially overweight with a body mass index of 27.8 and a woman at
27.3 -- numbers based on the body mass averages of people in their
20's. But a committee convened by the national heart institute
redefined overweight to be a body mass index of 25 or over, for men and
women.
As justification, it cited studies
finding a slight increase in death rates as the body mass increased
above 25. The increases tended to be modest up to an index level of 30,
the official designation for obesity. And though this mortality data
was hardly solid, Dr. Oliver said, ''Overnight, 37 million people were
suddenly overweight.''
Dr. Katherine
Flegal, a statistician at the National Center for Health Statistics,
says there is a problem with the graph, which was shaped like a shallow
U with 25 at its base. ''If the nadir is 25, then, yes, mortality does
begin to increase with B.M.I.'s above 25, so the statement is literally
true,'' she said. ''But of course if the curve is U-shaped with a nadir
at 25, then mortality also increases as B.M.I. decreases below 25.''
All of which suggests that a body mass index of 25, far from being
dangerous, is actually optimal.
So perhaps it's a good thing that few people seem to assess their weigh based on the B.M.I.
On one hand, ''almost no women think they are skinny,'' Dr. Flegal. On
the other, she said, only 42 percent of men with a B.M.I. of 25 think
they are overweight.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
GRAPHIC:
Photo: William Howard Taft,1903Chart: ''Oval Office?''Almost half of
American presidents have been overweight, based on the body mass index
guidelines established by the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention. At the extreme ends of the spectrum: James Madison and
William Howard Taft. Here is a selection:Being overweight is defined as
a body mass index of 25 or higher. Body mass index is determined by
using this formula:B.M.I. = WEIGHT IN POUNDS/HEIGHT IN INCHES2 x
703James Madison -- 1809-17HEIGHT: 5 feet 4 inchesWEIGHT: 99B.M.I.:
17.0Andrew Jackson -- 1829-37HEIGHT: 6 feet 1 inchWEIGHT: 144B.M.I.:
19.0Abraham Lincoln -- 1861-65HEIGHT: 6 feet 4 inchesWEIGHT: 178B.M.I.:
21.7John F. Kennedy -- 1961-63HEIGHT: 6 feetWEIGHT: 167B.M.I.:
22.6Ulysses S. Grant -- 1869-77HEIGHT: 5 feet 8 1/2 inchesWEIGHT:
156B.M.I.: 23.3Richard M. Nixon -- 1969-74HEIGHT: 5 feet 11 1/2
inchesWEIGHT: 174B.M.I.: 23.9Millard Fillmore -- 1850-53HEIGHT: 5 feet
9 inchesWEIGHT: 164B.M.I.: 24.2George Washington -- 1789-97HEIGHT: 6
feet 2 inchesWEIGHT: 199B.M.I.: 25.5George W. Bush -- 2001-HEIGHT: 6
feetWEIGHT: 194B.M.I.: 26.3Bill Clinton -- 1993-2001HEIGHT: 6 feet 2
1/2 inchesWEIGHT: 223B.M.I.: 28.3Chester A. Arthur -- 1881-85HEIGHT: 6
feet 2 inchesWEIGHT: 224B.M.I.: 28.7Theodore Roosevelt --
1901-09HEIGHT: 5 feet 10 inchesWEIGHT: 210B.M.I.: 30.2William Howard
Taft -- 1909-13HEIGHT: 6 feetWEIGHT: 312B.M.I.: 42.3(Source by National
Health and Nutrition Survey)
