June 21, 2025 — “It takes a village to create standards of care,” said Nuha Ali El Sayed as she opened a symposium on the emerging standards of care for obesity. Truer words were never spoken. Defining these standards is tricky. That’s because they they need to reflect both what is desirable and a standard that good health professionals […]
May 20, 2025 — A new viewpoint in JAMA Pediatrics articulates a concern we hear repeatedly about the Lancet Commission on Clinical Obesity. Pediatric obesity experts have reservations about applying the concept of preclinical obesity in pediatrics. Melania Manco is a professor of pediatrics, clinical research scientist, and consultant endocrinologist at the Bambino Gesù Hospital in Rome. She writes: […]
April 21, 2025 — It is really easy to beat up on the lowly BMI. The Lancet Commission on clinical obesity gently kicked it to the curb by saying BMI “can both overestimate and underestimate adiposity” and thus declared its obsolescence as a singular measure for excess adiposity. “Excess adiposity should be confirmed by either direct measurement of body […]
March 18, 2025 — We’ve been living with the consensus report of the Lancet Commission on Clinical Obesity now for two months. Enough time has passed for feelings about the strengths and limitations of this work to take shape. A new commentary in the BMJ yesterday brings a sharp focus to the struggle of defining and dealing with current […]
February 15, 2025 — It would be hard to dispute that we are living in an age of cynicism. Distrust is all around – especially when the subject is health. Thus, it should not be a surprise that consensus about diagnosing obesity turns out to be quite a challenge. And yet, we are surprised that a global consensus on […]
January 23, 2025 — It was easy to see this coming. Our top prediction for the new year was that the Lancet Commission on Clinical Obesity would be big news and the spark for a big debate. The news splash was unmistakable. From 92 countries all over the world, more than 3,000 persons lined up for the launch event. […]
January 17, 2025 — Obesity is linked to many common diseases, such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, fatty liver disease and knee osteoarthritis. Obesity is currently defined using a person’s body mass index, or BMI. This is calculated as weight (in kilograms) divided by the square of height (in metres). In people of European descent, the BMI for […]
January 15, 2025 — We’ve been waiting for this. And judging by the initial responses, the world is ready for it. The Lancet Commission on Clinical Obesity has made it official: The clinical disease of obesity is all about health. Not size, not appearance, not BMI. This global consensus report published at long last late yesterday in Lancet Diabetes […]
July 6, 2024 — We’ve been hearing quite a lot about this on many levels. For years now, obesity thought leaders and even the public have had an increasingly sour relationship with BMI. It’s been misused, abused, detested, and even accused of racism. Yes, the love is gone. On Friday, the European Association for the Study of Obesity (EASO) […]
September 23, 2023 — We have a relationship problem with BMI – the body mass index. As with any rocky relationship, we can’t seem to live with it and we can’t seem to live without it either. Professor Robert Kushner described the the good, the bad, and the ugly of BMI better than ever in an opening session of […]
