New Lancet obesity definition shows improved diagnostic accuracy over BMI alone

For generations, a simple ratio of height to weight has served as medicine's shorthand for obesity — useful, but never quite equal to the complexity of human metabolism. Now, researchers at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School have published a systematic comparison in JAMA Network Open, testing whether a new definition from the Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology Commission — one that incorporates metabolic markers and body composition — can do what BMI alone has never fully managed: accurately identify who is truly living with obesity. The findings arrive at a moment when the gap between