Abstract
Assessment of relations between overweight/obesity and CHD is affected by the cut-offs used for desirable weight. The (NY) Metropolitan Life Insurance Company’s 1959 desirable weights were widely used in the 1960s and 1970s. They were based on actuarial statistics (but to have life insurance requires a secure income). In the 1980s countries changed to use much simpler Body Mass Index (BMI) numbers – usually 25 kg/m2 for the start of overweight and 30 kg/m2 for obesity.
Epidemiologists have, however, used many different criteria for obesity. Its relation to CHD largely disappears if high blood pressure, high serum cholesterol and diabetes are excluded. In 1983 workers in Gothenburg found that waist circumference or intra-abdominal adiposity was more closely related to cardiovascular disease than BMI. Years 1959, 1981, 1983.
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Truswell, A.S. (2010). Obesity. In: Cholesterol and Beyond. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8875-8_16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8875-8_16
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