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Disentangling the size and adiposity components of obesity

International Journal of Obesity volume 35, pages 548–549 (2011)Cite this article

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The issue of how to assess adiposity (total or regional body fat) or obesity (a rather more arbitrary phenomenon, defined as body weight sufficiently excessive to impact deleteriously on health), while avoiding confounding effects of body size, is a long-standing problem. In the absence of high-quality imaging techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging, most clinical measurements are based on simple anthropometry. On average, taller people, whether child or adult, tend to have greater body weight, regional tissue masses and body dimensions, though not in simple relationships of geometric similarity or isometry.1 If simple body dimensions as measured by anthropometry reflect size as well as adiposity, as is well shown by studies of various body girths,1, 2 then some adjustment for size must be made to assess nutritional status.

The body mass index (BMI), calculated as weight (WT, in kg) divided by the square of height (HT, in m), is the most widely used obesity index adjusting weight for height. Since its original development by Quetelet, BMI has been the subject of several research questions regarding its validity and utility. Two that are relevant here are (a) how best, statistically, to adjust weight for height and (b) how best to assess metabolic risk in populations. It is not commonly recognised that there is more than one rationale by which the adjustment of weight for height may be undertaken, and that different rationales may be relevant to the aforementioned two questions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Childhood Nutrition Research Centre, UCL Institute of Child Health, London, UK

    J C K Wells

  2. MRC Centre of Epidemiology for Child Health, UCL Institute of Child Health, London, UK

    T J Cole

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  1. J C K Wells
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  2. T J Cole
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Correspondence to J C K Wells.

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Wells, J., Cole, T. Disentangling the size and adiposity components of obesity. Int J Obes 35, 548–549 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/ijo.2011.53

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