Body Weight and Mortality

Over the years ideal or desirable weights have been associated with the lowest mortality and defined in a number of ways. The widely used height-weight tables of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, developed in the 1940s, have been supplanted in the last decade by new weight standards based on findings of several population-based studies that compared body weight to mortality. The Quetelet or body mass index (BMI), now used as the de facto...