It does not appear that the present epidemic of overweight and obesity will attenuate in the near future. Our ability to diagnosis, monitor, and treat obesity is limited, in part, by our limited ability to assess body fatness easily. There is no universally accepted method of measuring body fatness or for quantifying. obesity clearly, and current methods are hampered with problems of nonuni- versal assumptions, and limited by application of methodology for obese indi- viduals.