Use and Misuse of BMI Categories

Body mass index (BMI) was introduced in the 19th century as a measure of weight relative to height.Before the late 20th century, overweight and obesity were not considered a population-wide health risk, but the advent of new weight loss drugs in the 1990s accelerated the medicalization of BMI.A BMI category labeled obesity was adopted in 1997 by a World Health Organization consultation and subsequ…