Normal weight obesity

All unapproved Citizendium articles may contain errors of fact, bias, grammar etc. A version of an article is unapproved unless it is marked as citable with a dedicated green template at the top of the page, as in this version of the 'Biology' article. Citable articles are intended to be of reasonably high quality. The participants in the Citizendium project make no representations about the reliability of Citizendium articles or, generally, their suitability for any purpose. This article is currently being developed as part of an Eduzendium student project in the framework of a course entitled Appetite and Obesity at Edinburgh University. The course homepage can be found at CZ:UoE Appetite and Obesity 2011. For the course duration, the article is closed to outside editing. Of course you can always leave comments on the discussion page. The anticipated date of course completion is 01 April 2012. One month after that date at the latest, this notice shall be removed. Besides, many other Citizendium articles welcome your collaboration!

More than half of American adults who have a normal body weight nevertheless have high percentage of body fat(>20% for men and >30% for women), as well as heart and metabolic disturbances, giving rise to the concept of normal weight obesity.

Introduction

The prevalence of obesity has risen rapidly over the years and shows no clear signs of slowing down. A great epidemiological representation of that can be seen in studies using the population of the US of A, collected from the 1960s to present time. It has shown that obesity in the population has increased from ~13% to almost 30%.

To clinically classify a person as being obese, their Body Mass Index (BMI) must be equal to or greater than 30kg/m2. However, the spectrum of obesity is quite large with Normal Weight Obesity (NWO) being at one end. NWO, found in almost half of the American adult population, is when a person has a normal BMI or normal body weight but also has a high percentage of body fat(>20% for men and >30% for women) as well as heart and metabolic disturbances.