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The timeline can be navigated with the “Scroll Left” and “Scroll Right” buttons or by dragging the pointer to a date on the timeline waveform (located at the bottom of the screen on the desktop version and on the left of the screen on mobile). To filter by a particular topic and see a smaller section of the data, make a selection on the dropdown “Filters” menu or click “Search” to do a keyword search. Hover over the abbreviated filter tags in the blue boxes to see the complete name of the filter, or click a filter to display all the data with this tag. If you want to take a deeper dive into a specific topic by viewing a narrative essay page and a curated timeline, click on “Stories.”

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Chart showing height, weight, and ranges for "underweight," "normal," "overweight," and "obese."
Body Mass Index chart. (Image: Intl. Inst. of Tropical Agriculture)

National Institutes of Health ties their definition of "obesity" to the Body Mass Index.

1985

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Body Mass Index chart. (Image: Intl. Inst. of Tropical Agriculture)

The Body Mass Index (BMI) scale has been widely critiqued for its racial bias and inaccurate generalizations, as it presents a standardized scale that compares everyone to an idealized white body.