Is obesity really a disease?
Obesity is unquestionably a major risk factor for disease and an increasingly serious societal problem, but is it actually a disease? I would argue that obesity, defined purely by a BMI of >30, is really just a number – an objective finding. In the long-honored tradition of medical science, an objective finding is not a disease, unless it is tied to a pathogenesis. For example, anemia is just a number, …