The USA's National Institutes of Health (NIH) decision to apply the BMI standards recommended by the WHO consultation on obesity caused some frowns and overshadowed the key issues when new guidelines were adopted in June. 

The Institutes (National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, in co-operation with the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases) released the first Federal guidelines on the identification, evaluation, and treatment of overweight and obesity. 

The decision to move away from the previous US benchmark a little over 27 left some anxious about suddenly  becoming re-classified "overweight". 
 
In fact  25 million more joined the overweight club making the current estimate 97 million Americans with a BMI >25. 

Despite the ubiquitous image of overweight and obese Americans,  the average US woman is only moderately overweight with a BMI of 26 - not much different from her English counterpart. 
 
 But the acceptance of the standard used elsewhere caused a rift within the National Institutes of Health with a protest vote from Prof Judith Stern, who expressed concern that many well-muscled individuals would be mislabelled overweight. 

"My bottom line is, 'Why needlessly stigmatize 25 million more American adults by calling them overweight?" It doesn't help in the treatment and it's not justified,"  Prof Stern told CNN. 

International Obesity Task Force member Prof F. Xavier Pi-Sunyer, who chaired the expert 
panel, said:  "The evidence is solid that the risk for various cardiovascular and other diseases rises significantly when someone's BMI is over 25 and that risk of death increases as the body mass index reaches and surpasses 30." 

"The guidelines tell the truth about the risks associated with unhealthy weight. We hope that physicians and the public will take the message seriously and use the guidelines to begin to deal effectively with a difficult problem." 

"Its an educational campaign to tell the American people that they really are the fattest nation in the world. It is important for them to know that and to try to do something about it,"  added Dr Pi-Sunyer, director of the Obesity Research Center, St. Luke's/Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York City. 
 
NHLBI Director Dr. Claude Lenfant announcing the new guidelines said:  "Overweight and obesity pose a major public health challenge. The development of these guidelines was a pioneering achievement since they were the first ever developed by the Institute using an evidence-based model and methodology." 
 
 
 

Click here for NIH Guidelines official news release