For people genetically predisposed to a wider girth, these unhealthy lifestyles compounded the problem, resulting in an even higher rate of weight gain, researchers reported inThe standard measure for obesity, the Body-Mass Index , is calculated on the basis of weight and height.
There are currently about two billion people 18 and older – 39% of all adults – with a BMI above the"overweight" threshold of 25, and 700 million of them are clinically obese. Comparing the two groups at the extremes, the researchers found, for example, that 35-year-old men with genetic variants known to favor weight gain were already heavier in the mid-1960s than men the same age without those fat-inducing genes.Women showed the same trend, though the increase over time was somewhat smaller.
Lifestyle