Obese And Ignorant About It: Certainly Not A Bliss

‘Ignorance is bliss’, goes the age old adage. However, this axiom might not hold water for a quarter of the British population who are unaware of the fact that they are obese. A study conducted by the British Medical Journal revealed that only seventy five percent of the obese admitted that they were obese.

While it is common knowledge in medical fraternity that overweight people run a greater risk of developing diseases like diabetes, heart disease and cancerdefine, Britain finds itself in a situation where more than half of the country is overweight or obese, but only three –fourth of such people are conscious of it.

What is more discouraging is that the proportion of this ‘unaware’ segment has increased since 1999. Eight years ago eighty one cent of those who were obese and overweight identified themselves in the correct category as against seventy five percent in 2007.

The study used Body mass indexdefine (BMI) as a tool to define people as obese or not. BMI is defined as the individual's body weight divided by the square of their height. This formula is also universally used in medicine produce a unit of measure of kg/m2.

As a thumb rule, people with less than 16.5 BMI are considered severely underweight, with a BMI of between 20 and 25 are considered to have a healthy weight, while a BMI of between 25 and 30 is overweight. A BMI from 35 to 40 indicates clinically obese people and a BMI of above 40 indicates morbidly Obese.

Professor Jane Wardle, who led the study, observed, "Increased attention to the health risks of excess weight might have left individuals more reluctant to identify themselves with labels such as 'overweight' or 'obese'.

She further observed, "Certainly, there is evidence that some overweight individuals resist identifying with terminology that they perceive as stigmatizing, preferring to adopt euphemistic identifiers for overweight such as 'chubby' or 'big boned'."

An alarming trend seen is that fat people are increasing by the day, thus making it trickier for those who are overweight to identify their problem. In the present day Britain, people have become accustomed to seeing more of the population carrying extra pounds.