Basal slenderness

Standard methods may completely underestimate global obesity burden

"Hruschka and Hadley present evidence from a number of studies that these variations in human form are widespread and can be quite dramatic -- and that, by ignoring them, researchers underestimate adult obesity levels (by over 400-500 million). Given that these differences appear to arise early in childhood, they may also misprioritize high-risk areas for child undernutrition.

The researchers' proposed solution to these biases relies on the idea of "basal slenderness." This is the expected BMI in a population before it begins to add excess fat due to urbanization, increasing opportunities for consumption of high-calorie foods and other changes due to modernization. Adjusting BMI for a population's basal slenderness gives each population a cutoff that reflects the amount of a person's BMI that is due to body fat versus other body tissues."