The Problem with BMI and the Common Perception of Weight edit: tl;dr - we've lost perspective on what fat is, and fat people want to keep it that way. I've come to accept that most people have an incorrect mental picture of the appearance of the overweight, obese, and morbidly obese classifications.  I've been guilty of this myself in the past.  I'd say most people probably think an overweight person looks totally normal, an obese person looks mildly overweight, and a morbidly obese person is slightly in the bottom to middle of the obese range.  They probably only think of the mega hams like boogie2988 as truly obese, and they definitely think that morbidly obese means you're pretty much permanently stuck in bed, because I've seen people saying that way too many times. Nearly everyone has the wrong idea of what these categories actually mean and what people who fit them actually look like, while people who are an appropriate weight get called skinny and anorexic.  It really shows how bad the situation has become.  With over half the population being overweight or obese, and the number 1 killer being heart disease followed by a slew of other things that are also strongly correlated with being fat, it's not a surprise to find out that people's perspective on what a healthy weight looks like is skewed so badly.  It fits the bigger picture.  It's a symptom of the health crisis we're facing, the obesity epidemic. BMI measuring of students in public schools has been done, but that's clearly not enough.  What needs to happen is to have it made standard for kids to be educated about BMI as part of their grade school health class curriculum.  It wasn't part of mine.  More than that, we need to have them see what people within each category look like, so that they have an accurate view.  The problem I foresee with this is twofold.  Firstly, fat students and fat parents will complain about body shaming.  Whale songs full of fat logic, fat excuses, and tales of oppression will be sung endlessly.  The second problem is that you will have people fighting against BMI being taught in schools in much the same way that you see people fighting against the teaching of evolution in science classes. In other words, the biggest obstacle we face in trying to conquer obesity is the obese population itself.  The fat shits don't want to get better, and they also don't want anyone else getting proper information about obesity.  Fat people actively put out disinformation about the subject in much the same way that christians and mulsims put out disinformation about areas of science which appear to contradict their own interpretations of their holy books. The first step to a solution is admitting there is a problem.  Giving people an accurate view of BMI categories and what they look like seems to be an important first step.  Unfortunately, there are movements like Health At Every Size which blatantly contradict established studies on the relationship of excessive fat and health risks/conditions.  We can't collectively take that first step when you have so many people actively fighting to deny reality.