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Obese people have an increased risk of premature death and disability, mainly from cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, osteoarthritis, gallstones, and certain types of cancer. The more severe the obesity, the greater the excess risk, so any definition of a threshold at which the obesity is "serious" is arbitrary. In the white population of the United States, the prevalence of a body-mass index (the weight in kilograms divided by the square of the height in meters) above 30 is about 15 percent in men and 18 percent in women -- similar to the prevalence among men and women in northern and western
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