A tub of lard

It seems one can’t go a day without seeing some article or news story about how fat we Americans all are. Even worse, the word obese is often tossed about with reckless abandon. According to the Oregon Department of Human Services, 25 percent of Oregonians are obese. Does that number seem high to anyone else?

A person is considered obese if they are more than 20 percent over their ideal weight. Ideal weight? I’m sure we all have our own idea of what our ideal weight would be, but let’s see what the state thinks it should be. Ideal weight, as it’s called, is determined by body mass index (or BMI). Many, if not all of us, have heard of BMI, but what it means and how is it calculated is not so commonly known.

Your BMI is determined by a measurement that takes into account your height and weight. These are then multiplied and divided to come up with your body mass index, which is used for reference on a chart to show you if you are of normal weight, overweight, underweight or obese. Notice this calculation does not take into account body type, bone structure, body fat percentage or muscle density.

Many physicians have acknowledged that the BMI rating system is flawed in these ways and yet it is still used to determine state averages and the like. Now we have people using a system in a way it was never intended for the sake of ease.

Of course it would not be reasonable or even feasible to ask every Oregonian to come to a clinic and have their body fat and muscle density measured—that would take much more time than it would be worth and the data would undoubtedly change before it could be properly compiled. One should note that we have agencies using this system to measure data and then presenting it as fact when it is, in reality, terribly skewed.

One needs only common sense to see that a 25 percent obesity rate is probably not so. How often, in your everyday life, do you see someone that you would consider obese? According to the statistics it should be one out of every four people.

Not to mention that the concepts of obese and overweight, in an everyday context, are incredibly subjective. Labeling someone as overweight due to a mostly arbitrary number is just short of ridiculous.

The utility of the BMI to determine health has become increasingly distant from its original use. Someone who ranks as overweight on the BMI could easily be healthier and fit than someone who is in the normal range. According to the BMI, Trailblazer Greg Oden is overweight to the point of near obesity.

To most he doesn’t look like an unhealthy person. True, a man over seven feet tall with the muscle density of an athlete is an uncommon exception. But Oden and people like him are doing their part to inflate these numbers and percentages.

So now the state of Oregon, which has used this incredibly flawed system to tell us how fat we are, is passing laws to help us get slim. First and foremost is a new law that requires restaurants with more than 15 locations to post caloric and other nutritional information on their menus.

Assuming that we are actually as obese as records would indicate, this seems to be a case of too little too late. Anyone who regularly indulges in fast food or is obese will not be affected in the least by such information. The only people that would take this new information into account are the people who probably wouldn’t eat it anyway.

Do people really benefit from government intervention and education about obesity? It would seem the answer is no. The country has gradually been gaining weight over the past couple of decades. The reason a chart about obesity rates in Oregon does not stir people into action is that, though it may be a shocking statistic, very few people actually see dozens of obese people every day as the statistics indicate we should—that’s because they aren’t actually there.

Many Americans are probably overweight, especially in comparison to other countries worldwide, but epidemic seems to be a strong word indeed. Using the body mass index system of measurement to determine an individual as obese is a gross misuse of the term and is often inaccurate.

Ideal or appropriate weight is contextual and often determined by a culture. People who are truly obese, meaning that they suffer serious and debilitating medical affects from their weight, are out there. But state governments and diet companies have adopted this word and applied it to a mass of people who are not really obese because it serves their purposes to do so.

What is their purpose? Well the diet industry is worth tens of billions of dollars yet we continue to fatten along with their wallets. The math isn’t so hard to figure out on this one.