Fox news is proclaiming that not only are we Americans all getting fatter, but now the percentage of obese Americans is greater than the percentage of overweight Americans.
This is crap.
The article relies on the sample population being measured according to the Body Mass Index, or BMI, which is fundamentally unsound. The BMI is a strict height-weight ratio, so percentage of body fat vice muscle mass is not accounted for. Nor is ratio of waist-to-neck (which is what the Army uses). Nor is any other assessment tool used to discriminate as to whether you're a stud or a lardass.
So if one posits that muscle weighs more than fat, the aggregate numbers of any given population will be skewed towards being too heavy. In fact, one could reasonably hypothesize that, were the American population to suffer one of its periodic throes of fitness mania, similar studies would indicate that we are getting fatter and more out of shape because people were shedding fat and putting on heavier muscle.
I get the ass at these types of articles because 1) they're bad science, and 2) they're calling me fat. Actually, I found a BMI calculater on the 'net and determined that I'm obese.
I'm not going to generate a vanity-based laundry list of my fitness bona fides; let's just say that the mesomorphic mass of twisted steel and sex appeal that is Mongo is not obese.
I'm a Super-Predator, dammit.
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