There are so many news articles and reports about Americans getting fat with claims like

If the rate of obesity and overweight continues at this pace, by 2015, 75 per cent of adults and nearly 24 per cent of US children and adolescents will be overweight or obese

But what do they consider overweight an obese? According to the BMI standard I am not only overweight but obese. I admit I need to drop some weight but I don’t think anyone would actually look at me as obese (see for yourself).

You can’t present claims like the previously quoted article without letting the readers know how those statistics were calculated. Are Americans getting fatter? Probably but I really don’t think it’s as bad as people claim.