1 yr. ago • 90%

Research found Body Mass Index (BMI) measurement is less sensitive to define obesity than we thought, instead, body fat percentage is a more reliable indicator of an individual's general health tha...

english.tau.ac.il One Third of Normal-Weight Individuals are Obese

Researchers at Tel Aviv University found that the widely used Body Mass Index (BMI) measurement is less sensitive to define obesity than we thought

15 comments

I'm confused, isn't this already widely known? The BMI scale makes no distinction between fat and muscle, and muscle is twice as dense. When the scale was invented, the creator had no intention to make it a medical tool and it only studied the weight of white men within a certain age group. When it got adopted for medical research, it was intended to only be a measure of populations not individuals.

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- It's sadly still used widely in the US... Many providers have brought up BMI with my clients when I was a caseworker for years, and sometimes I'd ask the provider questions to get them to admit it's limitations in front of my clients when I felt it was appropriate. Sometimes a BMI rating is only useful in lowering someone's self-esteem...
  
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  My insurance provider (in germany) asked for height and weight for disability insurance and my godaunt who was the salesman very heavily hinted to maybe fudge the height upwards and weight downwards a bit, and all I can think of is that they actually use bmi for risk calculations. Better not be muscular i guess.
  
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  It's prevalent here too in the UK, used by the NHS very widely. Most people are aware that it can go awry, eg a 6'3 muscled rugby player would be considered obese using the BMI metric. I think as a general tool though it has some use (though people should be aware of its limitations)
  
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  I'm proud of you for stepping up when you could. It's sad though that we still need to dispell it. In school it felt synonymous with shame.
  
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  The key indicator to me is that life insurance companies don’t bother with it. As soon as money is on the line, BMI of an individual is worthless.
  
  When I applied for a policy they use my weight height and a chest to waist ratio to determine what sort of risk I was.
  
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- BMI is still good tool but you need to understand it first. If you do lot of sports it is not really useful, but if you want rough estimate how fat ”normal” person is only using height and weight, then it is useful tools.
  
  Of course if you just look the number but not the person you might get wrong idea, but it does not make it bad tool.
  
  Not every place have body fat measuring equipment and cheap ones give totally wrong readings.
  
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  I feel like you said it’s still good and then listed several reasons why it isn’t good. Just looking at the number and not the person is exactly why BMI isn’t a good tool. You talk about cheap body fat measuring tools being bad because of totally wrong results while saying BMI measurements can be wrong as well.
  
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this is obvious if you know anything about BMI

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I thought this was known.

BMI was created as a statistical tool for comparing populations against one another. It works when all the various deviations from normal average out.

For individuals, it only works for someone of perfectly average height and build. The farther your height is from average, the more wrong BMI becomes.

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BMI is bogus. According to BMI, I need to lose 50 pounds to be considered fit, based solely on my height. Sure, I could stand to tone up a bit, however such a drastic number as suggested would require losing a massive amount of strength.

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In before the 350 pound chunguses start talking about how much heavier muscle tissue is... Yes, BMI is unreliable and has issues, no you probably need to lose weight anyway.

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No shit, Sherlock

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Good research often leads to bad headlines

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