The lexicographers at Merriam-Webster believe “a dictionary’s mission is to give accurate information about the current vocabulary of a language.” That’s why, they explain on their website, the acronym for coronavirus disease 2019, COVID-19, has been added to their dictionary “in record time.”

But not every worldwide pandemic requires a new word. Sometimes an old word accurately assesses the situation.

To name the other current situation many health experts consider to be a worldwide pandemic - and particularly grave in the United States - they simply repurposed a word first uttered 800 years ago.

Overfat.

As defined in an article published in the July 2017 issue of Frontiers in Public Health, overfat is different from being overweight and more prevalent. It “refers to the presence of excess body fat that can impair health, even for normal-weight non-obese individuals.”

If you think those declaring overfat a pandemic are being overly dramatic, you may need to review the dictionary definition of the word. When used as an adjective, Merriam-Webster defines it as “occurring over a wide geographic area and affecting an exceptionally high proportion of the population.”

The rate of adult Americans who are overfat is estimated in a November 2017 Frontiers in Public Health article at 91 percent. (The rate for children is given as 50 percent.) As of Nov. 9, Statista.com reports that 10,288,480 Americans have contracted COVID-19 - or about 3.1 percent.

So why do we obsess about the lesser pandemic and ignore the larger? Is it because we like masks but loathe muzzles?

Wise cracks aside, we do have a problem.

Statista.com estimates 243,768 Americans have died as a result of COVID-19, yet the US Department of Health & Human Services has the rate of death due to obesity at about 300,000 deaths per year - for more than 20 years. While obesity is clearly an ongoing nationwide problem, there’s an equally pressing concern.

Are you one of those normal-weight non-obese Americans who is overfat and compromising your health because of it?

A body fat percentage test best answers that question, but those performed at a health facility tend to be expensive, and those done at home tend to be inaccurate. Dr. Phil Maffetone, lead author of the July 2017 Frontiers in Public Health article - and sole author of more than 20 health and fitness books - has a suggestion.

Use a tape measure and determine your waist-to-height ratio.

In “What’s Your Body Fat Percentage?”, an article accessible at his website, he writes, “While this [ratio] does not give a percentage of body fat, it does accurately determine whether you have excess body fat or not.” The specific measurement of the waistline at the level of the belly button is used for good reason.

Abdominal fat, also known at visceral fat, “has been linked to metabolic disturbances and increased risk for cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes,” according to the Harvard University website. “In women, it is also associated with breast cancer and the need for gallbladder surgery.”

Mayo Clinic.org warns “belly fat is a more dangerous fat” and an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, colorectal cancer, sleep apnea, and blood pressure, and premature death from any cause, particularly in men, results from too much of it.

In Maffetone’s opinion, unless your waist measurement is less than half your height, you do indeed have too much of it.

So if you’re a six-foot-tall (72 inches) male, a waist measurement of 36 inches or more means you’re overfat. A five-foot-tall (60 inches) female with a waist measurement of 30 inches or more is overfat, too.

In other words, when you divide your waist measurement into your height, you want an answer of less than .5.

If you get that math result, you’re a relative rarity, one of the 9 percent of American adults who is not hindering his or her health by having a bulging belly.

If you don’t, you have some work to do. The first bit of it is to determine what caused the high number.

While your rate of exercise and quality of sleep need to be considered, Maffetone feels “junk-food carbohydrates,” the most dominant carbs in “our food supply” are the most likely dietary culprit. Junk-food carbs create such a spike in insulin that half cannot be immediately used as energy and convert to fat and keep “us from burning as much stored fat for energy” as we usually would.

What I have always advised is to not only severely limit junk-food carbs (technically simple carbs), but to also consume seemingly healthy simple carbs - such as those found in fruit and certain dairy products - only as parts of meals and snacks that contain mostly complex carbs and protein. The amount of insulin produced in a healthy body is determined by the ratio of simple carbs to all other micronutrients consumed with them.