http://www.slate.com/id/2223095
Quote:
The new research, which supports earlier findings that being slightly overweight is associated with living longer, has added to an ongoing controversy over how we measure obesity. At the center of this debate is the body mass index, a simple equation (your weight in kilograms divided by the square of your height in meters) that has in the last decade claimed a near-monopoly on obesity statistics. Some researchers now argue that this flawed and overly reductive measure is skewing the results of research in public health.
The new research, which supports earlier findings that being slightly overweight is associated with living longer, has added to an ongoing controversy over how we measure obesity. At the center of this debate is the body mass index, a simple equation (your weight in kilograms divided by the square of your height in meters) that has in the last decade claimed a near-monopoly on obesity statistics. Some researchers now argue that this flawed and overly reductive measure is skewing the results of research in public health.
Quote:
A recent critique (PDF) of the body mass index in the journal Circulation suggests that BMI's imprecision and publicity-friendly cutoffs may distort even the large epidemiological studies. (There's no definitive count of how many people are misclassified by BMI, but several studies have suggested that the error rate is significant for people of certain ages and ethnicities.) It's impossible to know which studies have been affected and in what direction they might have been skewed.
Our continuing reliance on BMI is especially grating given there's a very reasonable alternative. It turns out that the circumference around a person's waist provides a much more accurate reading of his or her abdominal fat and risk for disease than BMI. And wrapping a tape measure around your gut is no more expensive than hopping on a scale and standing in front of a ruler. That's why the American Society for Nutrition, the American Diabetes Association, and other prominent medical groups have lately promoted waist circumference measurements as a supplement to, or replacement for, the body mass index.
A recent critique (PDF) of the body mass index in the journal Circulation suggests that BMI's imprecision and publicity-friendly cutoffs may distort even the large epidemiological studies. (There's no definitive count of how many people are misclassified by BMI, but several studies have suggested that the error rate is significant for people of certain ages and ethnicities.) It's impossible to know which studies have been affected and in what direction they might have been skewed.
Our continuing reliance on BMI is especially grating given there's a very reasonable alternative. It turns out that the circumference around a person's waist provides a much more accurate reading of his or her abdominal fat and risk for disease than BMI. And wrapping a tape measure around your gut is no more expensive than hopping on a scale and standing in front of a ruler. That's why the American Society for Nutrition, the American Diabetes Association, and other prominent medical groups have lately promoted waist circumference measurements as a supplement to, or replacement for, the body mass index.