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Home / News / BMI campaign claims millions are overweight

BMI campaign claims millions are overweight


13 May 2008 16:45:23



An alarming number of UK adults are unaware of the importance of their Body Mass Index (BMI) when it comes to keeping healthy.

Weight loss experts at management programme LighterLife claim that at least at least 1.7 million adults are overweight or obese without realising it - a factor which may cause their life insurance premiums to rise.

Undertaken for the organisation by research company BMRB the survey is being used to launch BMI 4 Life Fortnight - a campaign to highlight the "life-and-death importance" of the statistic.

The research, which calculated the BMI for more than 1,000 adults, found that a quarter of respondents did not know what BMI meant while half had no idea how it was measured.

Juliette du Plessis, programme director at LighterLife, remarked: "Many just don't realise the significance of BMI. The research showed that 36 per cent of all respondents thought blood pressure was the most important number when it came to health dangers, with BMI second at 30 per cent.

"But a high BMI is actually one of the main causes of high blood pressure - and losing weight can eliminate this."

BMI is used to establish if someone is a healthy weight for their height. The 18.5 - 24.9 band is seen as healthy, while 25 plus is overweight, and 30 is obese, increasing risks of stroke, heart disease and diabetes.

Meanwhile Kieran Platt, director of Life Direct, has recently claimed that BMI, along with smoking, "greatly affects" life insurance premiums.
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