In 2024, the European Association for the Study of Obesity (EASO) published an updated framework for classifying obesity that recognizes that the use of BMI is a limited tool in defining the condition.

The organization’s new tool and its goal of promoting “the holistic treatment of obesity by combining both anthropometric and clinical components in its definition of obesity” call for combining BMI with the measurement of waist circumference to height and assessing for the presence of other comorbid physical or psychological conditions — using those three factors together to define obesity.

And while EASO researchers’ goal was to improve obesity management through personalized treatment similar to those for other chronic diseases, the results had another effect.

Researchers at Adelson

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