Welcome to Learning English, a daily 30-minute program from the Voice of America.

I'm Katie Weaver.

And I'm Mario Ritter, Jr. This program is designed for English learners, so we speak a little slower and we use words and phrases

especially written for people learning English. On today's program, John Russell reports on

proposals to change how doctors define overweight.

Ana Mateo offers advice about winter tasks for gardeners preparing for spring.

On the technology report, Jill Robbins tells about a chemical long used to fight fires in the American West.

Then the lesson of the day. But first...

A group of international experts is proposing a new way to define and identify obesity, a medical condition linked to having too much body fat.

The change aims to help doctors better identify and treat affected individuals.

The new proposal shifts attention from a highly debated method called the

body mass index, BMI. BMI is a calculation of a person's height and weight. The change would

mean BMI would no longer be the only way to define obesity.

The method would be expanded to include other measurements, such as waste size and other evidence

of health problems linked to being overweight. Obesity is estimated to affect more

than one billion people worldwide. In the U.S., about 40% of adults are considered obese,

the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says.

Dr. David Cummings of the University of Washington was one of 58 writers of a report

calling for a new obesity definition. The report recently appeared in the publication, the Lancet Diabetes and

endocrinology. The whole goal of this is to get a more precise definition so that we are

targeting the people who actually need the help most,

Cummings told the Associated Press.

...