The body mass index, better known as BMI, is a measure of obesity that has been in use for over 200 years. It was a formula created by Belgian mathematician Adolphe Quetelet. It takes your weight (sorry my fellow Americans, everyone else is on the metric system) in kilograms divides and divides it by height in meters squared. And from this you get a number that represent your total body mass relative to your height and weight. The ranges go from underweight to obese, and one decimal point can tip you in either direction. BMI has been used to study obesity in large populations, and for the most part it’s okay for those types of studies. However, when individual health is the topic at hand, using the body mass index can make judging a person’s health a little bit trickier.
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